“His hands were full of red sauce,” Pacino writes in his new memoir.
“I thought, ‘Is that how movie stars act?
it’s possible for you to do anything.'”
Marlon Brando and Al Pacino in ‘The Godfather’.Courtesy Everett Collection
Leave the gun, take the cacciatore.
“I actually didn’t want to talk to him.
Seriously, it f—ing scared me.
Al Pacino in 2023.Dominik Bindl/Getty
He was the greatest living actor of our time.
I grew up on actors like him larger-than-life people likeClark Gableand Cary Grant.
They were famous when fame meant something, before the bloom went off the rose.
But Francis said ‘you have to’ and so I did.”
“He was sitting on one hospital bed, I was sitting on the other,” he recalled.
“He was asking me questions: Where am I from?
How long have I been an actor?”
Unfortunately, Brando munching on his meal made it difficult for Pacino to focus.
“He was eating chicken cacciatore with his hands,” theDog Day Afternoonstar remembered.
“His hands were full of red sauce.
So was his face.
And that’s all I could think about the whole time.
Whatever his words were, my conscious mind was fixated by the stain-covered sight in front of me.
He was talking gobble, gobble, gobble, gobble and I was just mesmerized.”
Pacino was also troubled by the mess.
“What was he going to do with the chicken?”
“I hoped he wasn’t going to tell me to throw it in the garbage for him.
He disposed of it somehow without getting up.
I was wondering, ‘What is he going to do with his hands?
Should I get him a napkin?’
Dominik Bindl/Getty
TheHeatstar was flabbergasted by Brando’s carefree (or careless?)
“I thought, ‘Is that how movie stars act?
you could do anything,'” he remembered.
I was taught to be polite and grateful, so I probably just said thank you to him.
I was too scared to say anything at all.
What I should have said was, ‘Can you define “all right?"'”
“It’s what made his performance so memorable and so endearing.
We all fantasize about having someone like Don Vito we can turn to.
He continued, “That’s why people responded to him in the film.
It was more than just the bravado and the boldness; it was the humanity underneath it.
Want more movie news?
Pacino’s new memoir ,Sonny Boy,hits shelves Oct. 15.
