Al Pacino is an American actor widely regarded as one of the greatest actors of all time. Over a career spanning more than six decades, he played Michael Corleone in The Godfather, the bank robber in Dog Day Afternoon and the drug kingpin Tony Montana in Scarface, and he achieved the Triple Crown of Acting — competitive wins at the Academy Awards, the Tony Awards and the Emmy Awards. His intense, volcanic performances on stage and screen have made him one of the most imitated and most admired actors in film history.
Quick Facts
| Full Name | Alfredo James Pacino |
| Age | 86 years old |
| Date of Birth | April 25, 1940 |
| Birthplace | Manhattan, New York City, USA |
| Height | 5 ft 7 in (170 cm) |
| Nationality | American |
| Occupation | Actor |
| Partner | Not publicly in a relationship as of 2026 |
| Children | Four |
| Net Worth | Approx. $120 million |
Who Is Al Pacino?
Al Pacino is an American actor known for intense performances on stage and screen, and widely regarded as one of the greatest actors of all time. Born in Manhattan and raised in the South Bronx, he starred in The Godfather (1972) as Michael Corleone, a role that made him a star, and went on to headline many of the defining films of the 1970s and 1980s: Serpico, Dog Day Afternoon, Scarface and …And Justice for All. He won the Academy Award for Best Actor for Scent of a Woman in 1992, and he is one of the few performers to have achieved the Triple Crown of Acting, winning an Oscar, two Tony Awards and two Emmy Awards.
Pacino is a method actor, trained at the Actors Studio under Lee Strasberg, who was said to regard him as one of his most talented students. His films have grossed more than $3 billion at the worldwide box office, and he has received some of the highest honors in American arts, including the Golden Lion for Lifetime Achievement in 1994, the Golden Globe Cecil B. DeMille Award in 2001, the AFI Life Achievement Award in 2007, the National Medal of Arts in 2011 and the Kennedy Center Honors in 2016.
Early Life & Background
Alfredo James Pacino was born on April 25, 1940, in Manhattan, New York City. His parents, Salvatore Pacino and Rose Gerardi, divorced when he was two, and his mother moved with him to her parents’ home in the South Bronx, where he was raised by his mother and grandparents. He grew up imitating movie stars he saw at the local theater and acted out scenes for his friends, earning the nickname “Sonny.”
Pacino attended the High School of Performing Arts in Manhattan but dropped out at 17, after failing most of his classes except English. He spent years in low-paying jobs — messenger, busboy, postal clerk — while training as an actor at HB Studio and at the Actors Studio, where he studied under Lee Strasberg. He made his stage debut in 1967 and won his first Tony Award in 1969 for Does a Tiger Wear a Necktie?, launching one of the great stage careers in American theater.
Career
Pacino’s first film lead came in The Panic in Needle Park (1971), where Francis Ford Coppola noticed him and cast him as Michael Corleone in The Godfather (1972). The film was a sensation, and Pacino was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor, though as the star of the film he felt he should have been recognized as a leading actor. He went on to earn Oscar nominations for Serpico (1973), The Godfather Part II (1974) and Dog Day Afternoon (1975), building a reputation as the most intense actor of his generation.
After a quieter spell in the 1980s, Pacino returned as Tony Montana in Scarface (1983), now a cultural landmark, and in the 1990s he hit a new peak: Glengarry Glen Ross (1992), Scent of a Woman (1992) — for which his eighth Oscar nomination finally brought him the Best Actor award, for playing the blind, embittered Lieutenant Colonel Frank Slade — Carlito’s Way (1993), Heat (1995), in which he shared the screen with Robert De Niro for the first time, and Donnie Brasco (1997). On television, he won Emmy Awards for Angels in America (2003) and Phil Spector (2013).
Pacino continued to work steadily into his eighties, playing Jimmy Hoffa in Martin Scorsese’s The Irishman (2019), the agent Marvin Schwarz in Quentin Tarantino’s Once Upon a Time in Hollywood (2019) and Aldo Gucci in House of Gucci (2021), all alongside Leonardo DiCaprio‘s generation of stars. He also directed the films Looking for Richard (1996), a meditation on Shakespeare’s Richard III, and Modi (2024), about the artist Amedeo Modigliani.
Facts About Al Pacino
- Pacino has achieved the Triple Crown of Acting: an Academy Award, two Tony Awards and two Emmy Awards.
- He won the Academy Award for Best Actor for Scent of a Woman (1992), on his eighth Oscar nomination.
- Pacino has been nominated for nine Academy Awards across his career.
- He played Michael Corleone in all three Godfather films, from 1972 to 1990.
- Pacino met Robert De Niro on screen for the first time in Heat (1995), after both had appeared in The Godfather Part II without sharing a scene.