Down below the portrait, Mr. Pacino, wearing rumpled clothes and a tangled mop of hair, walked out the stage door recently and across the street to Sardi’s, where he set up in his usual corner table and ordered a shrimp cocktail. His deep-set eyes and raspy laugh were familiar, but in some of his flat vowels and musical stammer you could detect his distinctive performance as a vengeful, proud Shylock. Mr. Pacino, who turned 70 this year, talked with Jason Zinoman about his career, his craft and a lifetime of Shakespeare, although he deflected many questions about Shylock, which he said he preferred to avoid looking at from a critical distance. At several moments, when pressed about what he was thinking, he turned quiet. Then he’d pivot and fly in a new direction: “Marlon Brando said a great thing once,” he said interrupting one such interval. “In movies, when they say, ‘Action,’ you don’t have to do it. I like that.” These are excerpts from the conversation.
Q. You have now played Shylock on film and in Central Park. Why do it on Broadway?
A. Doing Shakespeare once is not fair to the play. I have been in Shakespeare plays when it’s not until the last two or three performances when I even understand certain things. In the old days star actors would travel the world doing the same parts over and over again.
Q. You are planning on playing King Lear in a movie. What other Shakespeare roles are in your future?
A. Someone backstage said, “Al, are you going to do Prospero?” I said: “No, I think I am going to try Romeo. Let’s leave the old guys to you.” I don’t know why I didn’t do Hamlet. I never thought I would have done it well. There are things I just don’t understand about that relationship with Ophelia. I once talked to Denzel Washington about doing “Othello.” I turned down Iago in the past because I thought there was a banality to Iago. Time has passed, and I have read the play again and again and found a way in. Now I want to do it. Q. Your Broadway debut was in 1969 when you won a Tony Award for playing a drug addict in “Does a Tiger Wear a Necktie?” Your first entrance was breaking through a door. A. That character was saying, “This is who I am.” It was a very important play for me.Francis Ford Coppola saw it and contacted me and said he had a script that was a love story. It was a beautifully written story about a college professor who falls in love with a student that ruins his life. It was done in an abstract, surreal way and had a mythical character in it. I wonder why it didn’t get made. I spent four or five days with him in San Francisco working on it and got to know him. The next year he called me with a film. It was “The Godfather.” Q. When is the last time you saw “The Godfather”?
A. I saw “Godfather II” again a year ago. I was surprised it held up.
Q. What did Broadway mean to you when you were a young actor in the late ’60s?
A. Broadway was an enigma. It was uptown. Up there it’s, like, real serious. I was just having fun. It was just great to have an audience. The cast usually outnumbered the audience downtown. Sometimes it was even.
Q. Was your family supportive of a life in the theater?
A. My mother was, but when the reality came, it didn’t compute. My grandmother always came to my shows. She was always concerned about the way I dressed — even later on, when I was well known and I supported her. I recall going to her house, and she went to her closet and she came out with a Manila envelope and there was $700 in there.
She said, “Take this and get yourself a suit.” I said, “Grandma, believe me, I don’t need it.” The money I was sending her, she was saving and was giving it to me. That was touching.
Q. You recently played two of the great controversial Jewish characters in the American theater: Roy Cohn in “Angels in America” and Shylock. Have you ever felt Jewish?
A. What is a Sicilian but an Italian Jew? That’s what I am. I did grow up in a predominantly Jewish neighborhood. They weren’t many Italians. I remember acting in a school play about the melting pot when I was very little. There was a great big pot onstage. On the other side of the pot was a little girl who had dark hair, and she and I were representing the Italians. And I thought: Is that what an Italian looked like?
Q. In defending usury to Antonio, Shylock makes a speech where he tells a biblical story about Jacob and Laban’s sheep that is cut from many versions of “Merchant” but not this one. How difficult is this to make clear to an audience?
A. When a little bit of it comes through, it’s a triumph. It’s worthy of a celebration. You really have trouble when you know that the actor you are saying it to doesn’t understand it. However, they kept it in, and I’m glad they did because something else is going on. Shylock is saying: This is sanctioned by God.
Q. Why does Shylock never back down?
A. It is tantamount to abuse what he goes through. One way to look at the play is that it’s an indictment against prejudice, because you see the results.
Q. How much is he motivated by rage that his daughter left him?
A. His daughter didn’t leave. My feeling is that they took his daughter from him. They stole his daughter from him. They took her. Shylock has his daughter and his work. He has two things to live for. He loses both.
I remember seeing George C. Scott doing Shylock in the Park. He had these great robes. Someone said to him, “Why do you flip up your robes like that?” He said, “When I sense the audience falling asleep and I want to wake them, I flip those robes.” You never know from whence it comes. Q. At this point in your career do you get better parts in television than films?
A. Some of the roles that are challenging are more in theater and TV. In movies there’s a tendency to cast actors in roles that have been successful for them. It has to pay for itself. I had a Salvador Dalí role I liked, but the movie didn’t get done. I am trying to be, I always say this, I am going to be more selective, because it takes a lot of energy to make a movie, and the movie is in the province of a director. If Michael Mann calls you, you do it. Q. Congratulations on turning 70. What was your birthday like?
A. It was a morbid affair. [Laughs] No, whether it’s a movie opening, or a party, you always wish you were somewhere else. I am not in need of attention. But it was a little bit different than all the others. You are going into the eighth decade and for one thing, you are still here. Getting older, as they say, this is not a dress rehearsal.
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