Quotes by Al Pacino

There are a lot of roles in Shakespeare, basically. If I feel that the script is a movie, I would be interested in doing any role of Shakespeare's.

I don't understand the hatred and fear of gays and bisexuals and lesbians it's a concept I honestly cannot grasp. To me, it's not who you love a man, a woman, what have you it's the fact that you love. That is all that truly matters.

I asked god for a bike, but I know god doesn't work that way. So I stole a bike and asked for forgiveness.

Theater for me at one point was a lifestyle, too.

When my mother got home from work, she would take me to the movies. It was her way of getting out, and she would take me with her. I'd go home and act all the parts. It had a tremendous influence on my becoming an actor.

The truth is, you know, we need our anodynes. You know that word, anodynes? We need that in life some times. A good warm bath can be one for you, or a whatever.

Be careful how you judge people, most of all friends. You don't sum up a man's life in one moment.

When I was a younger actor, I would try to keep it serious all day. But I have found, later on, that the lighter I am about things when I'm going to do a big scene that's dramatic and takes a lot out of you, the better off I am when I come to it.

Chekhov was as important to me as anybody as a writer.

Love goes through different stages. But it endures.

I went back to the stage because it was my way of dealing with the success I had, my way of coping. It was a way of escaping the responsibilty of what was happening.

You take a guy like George Clooney who goes out there to Darfur, and gets things done! That's magical. He's done a great thing.

I'm much more a European Italian than I am an American Italian, and I've always felt that that style of acting comedy is in me. I put comedy as much as I can into all my movies, if I can help it.

An actor basically likes to be asked to do something, no matter what position he's in. It feels more natural. Sitting and waiting is more gratifying.

People are always asking me to do Shakespeare -- at home, at colleges, on film locations, in restaurants. It's like playing a piece of music, getting all the notes. It's great therapy.

Our life is looking forward or looking back, that's it. Where is the moment?

I hope the perception is that I'm an actor, I never intended to be a movie star.

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.

I believe in one day at a time; you've got TODAY, that's what you' ve got.

Actors are always outsiders. It's necessary to be able to interpret -- and that gets distorted when you become famous.

At this point in my career, I don't have to deal with audition rejections. So I get my rejection from other things. My children can make me feel rejected. They can humble you pretty quick.

I'm an actor, and everything about me -- the way I perceive things, the way I have seen the world -- has been in relation to characters and how I would want to play something or not play it.

Responsibilities are relative. My responsibility is to a character in a script, to a part I'm playing.

I've never liked the recognition, the questions, the publicity. I have often felt like running away and hiding.

My early career was a real rush of movies and stardom -- it was almost overwhelming.

Ocean's Thirteen is a great group, and it was an opportunity to work with Steven Soderbergh. But mainly? It was shot in L.A. and I want to be next to my kids. So I've been doing everything that has to do with being next to them, close to them.

I don't like a lot of things like Iraq, I never did. Being in a position of celebrity and having your words carry such unnatural weight...I've always been a bit squeamish when it came to that kind of thing.

On any given Sunday you're gonna win or you're gonna lose. The point is -- can you win or lose like a man?

That's the way to live -- around people who care. It may be a tough ride, but something is going to come out of it.

The play is the source, it is orchestrated with words. In a movie, you are not dealing with as much as that. There are machines and wires. When you're acting for a camera, it keeps taking and never giving back.

I' ve won awards. And they didn't make me feel bad winning them. They made me feel pretty good. But it also did not make me feel bad NOT winning the Academy Award.

Women have always had equal importance onstage, and working with them must have altered my sensibilities. I've never felt sensitive to the whole issue, because being macho has never been a problem with me.

You do get very tired sometimes, when you're sitting around for hours in movies. You get depleted.

When Julia Marie Pacino was 5 or 6 years old, we were in an Italian restaurant, and these people came by the table and they would start talking to me, asking me for my autograph and she just went under the table.

All due respect and trying to be as modest as I can be, I am a dancer. But I don't think I would be on 'Dancing with the Stars,' mainly because I would be too shy.

Playing a character is an illusion, and I feel that when you know too much about a person, possibly part of that illusion is disrupted.

The literal, basic thing of the stage is really like a magnet. It brings me back to earth.

There are people whose sense of reality is very strong, who have a sense of honesty. Lee Strasberg is like that, my grandfather was like that. These are the kinds of men I've had close relationships with.

Certainly the movies were always in the air for me. I come from the era when actors thought it was a big deal to be in the movies.

When you perform with a live audience, the audience comes back to you, so that you and the audience are giving to each other, in a sense. It's an extraordinary thing. It's wild turf up there.

If you have the opportunity to meet someone as an actor, it's just great fodder for you. It's wonderful source stuff that we die for.

To be or not to be is by William Shakespeare beyond anything I can comprehend. I understand it on a superficial level, but the depth of it just boggles my mind. I think it's probably the greatest of all speeches ever written.

I'm not a violent person, never was, but I have this temperament that I've always displayed. I guess it has to do with my tradition and being Italian, we're very outgoing with our emotions.

Look, but don't touch. Touch, but don't taste. Taste, but don't swallow.

I don't regret anything. I feel like I've made what I would call mistakes. I picked the wrong movie, or I didn't pursue a character, but everything you do is part of you and you get something from it.

I've had very deep relationships that lasted for long periods of time with people -- you could almost call them marriages, even though I didn't marry. But it was costly.

I didn't go for the needle at all. I never cared for drugs, because I saw what they did to most people. I thought that was the end of the road.

Whether he's doing great acting or not, you're seeing somebody who is in the tradition of a great actor. What he does with it, that's something else, but he's got it all. The talent, the instrument is there, that's why he has endured.

I want to be a great actor someday, and I've decided there's no use philosophizing; the only way is to work at my craft.

I wanted to be a baseball player, naturally, but I wasn't good enough. I didn't know what I was going to do with my life. I just had a kind of energy, I was a fairly happy kid.

I would say I am more concerned with the plays I'm going to do than the movies. I'm more comfortable in a play. In film, there's always a certain sense of control, of holding back. The stage is different ; there's more to act. There are more demands put on you, more experiences to go through.

Shakespeare is one of the reasons I've stayed an actor. Sometimes I spend full days doing Shakespeare by myself, just for the joy of reading it, saying those words... I do Shakespeare when I am feeling a certain way.

There are a couple of times I would've liked to have married. I think I made a mistake, especially once.

I destroy the painting as soon as I can see what it is. When I can make out something in it, I destroy it because it's no longer coming from my unconscious.

My best advice to any young person is, if you want kids, be careful who you have them with. That's my mantra.

I'm constantly striving to break through to something new. You try to maintain a neutral approach to your work, and not be too hard on yourself.

It surprised me, the feeling I got when I won the Oscar for 'Scent of a Woman.' It was a new feeling. I'd never felt it. I don't see my Oscar much now. But when I first got it, there was a feeling for weeks afterward that I guess is akin to winning a gold medal in the Olympics.

To be really obvious about something, if somebody straps an M1 on your shoulder and throws you in Iraq, you're going to get a sense of what the hell's going on there. Boy, you'll wake up fast when bullets are flying over your head.

I don't like what's going on in Iraq, naturally. I'm part of a large majority of people who don't, but I do not know the whole story. I do not believe what I see on television. I believe a percentage of it, so it's hard for me to discern. I don't like what it's doing to the world.

After looking at Salomaybe, I don't know who the hell the real me is. I think it's closest now to the real me because for one thing, I'm used to this.

When I was younger, there was the sex thing. That's par for the course.When you're a movie star, it went with it. It's a kind of rite of passage, socially.

Show me a bad script and I will show you a big payday.

I went to Performing Arts because that was the only school that would accept me. My scholastic level was not very high.

I was never very happy with performing; it didn't turn me on much.

I turned down a lot of films before I made my first one. I knew that it was time for me to get into movies.

It's so funny when people who are not used to making movies get into it. You just can't believe how insufferably boring it is. Waiting around and doing these lines over and over and finally having to go in and loop the lines and dub them.

It's never really that much fun for me to do movies anyway, because you -- you know, you have to get up very early in the morning and you have to go in and you spend a lot of time waiting around.

My dad was in the army. World War II. He got his college education from the army. After World War II he became an insurance salesman. Really, I didn't know my dad very well. He and my mother split up after the war. I was raised by my maternal grandmother and grandfather, and by my mother.

We start to realize that there are anodynes in life that help us through the day. I don't care if it's a walk in the park, a look out the window, a good bubble bath -- whatever. Even a meal you like, or a friend you want to call. That helps us solve all this stuff in our head.

I've often said there's two kinds of actors. There's a more gregarious type and the shy type.

Explain to me what Italian-American culture is. We've been here 100 years. Isn't Italian-American culture American culture? That's because we're so diverse, in terms of intermarriage.

Acting is hard work. At times, it's very energizing and enervating. It's childish. It's also responsible. It's illuminating, enriching, joyful, drab. It's bizarre, diabolical. It's exciting.

I haven't encouraged Julia Marie Pacino or discouraged her. I let her go her own way. I did say to her that I thought that she had a real gift, and it's a good idea to know that. It's always good to go with your gift.

I used to say I wanted to genuflect to a woman, put her up on a pedestal higher and higher, way up beyond my grasp...Then I'd find another one.

It used to worry me what people said about me. I'm learning not to worry as much. Sometimes you feel critics are wrong all the time, but I don 't take objection to it, because that's the way it goes. They can be wrong, they can be right. They can be cruel, they can be kind.

I'm always on a red carpet ... the other day I thought, this ain't bad. You can meet people on it.

I love work because it keeps sex in perspective. Otherwise, it can become a preoccupation.

Larry Grobel has the illness of all writers, he can't help himself. You're talking to him and all of a sudden, you say, He's puttin' that in his cash register!

There was a time in my life when being dishonest with women was the natural way to be. I finally said, Hey, I have to stop this silliness.

Great directors can understand the staging in such a way that can make a scene come alive. Others have a certain way of pacing the scene.

Did you know I started out as a stand-up comic? People don't believe me when I tell them. That's how I saw myself, in comedy.

Jamie Foxx does a good rendition of me. It's a real gift, mimicry of that kind, the tonal thing. It's sort of like having a talent for playing an instrument.

I learned to wrestle, I learned defensive fighting at a young age, because when someone hit me, I would throw up and fall down.

I understand the directors much more. I was always rebelling against them when I was a youngster, I didn't want to be told what to do. I had no identification.

Forget the career, do the work. If you feel what you are doing is on line and you're going someplace and you have a vision and you stay with it, eventually things will happen.

I'm an actor, not a star. Stars are people who live in Hollywood and have heart-shaped swimming pools.

The thing that can get you a little upset is when people say other people are better than you. That can bug you.

Actually, the person I related to was James Dean. I grew up with the Dean thing. Rebel Without A Cause had a very powerful effect on me.

Being the actors of the craft, the trade, one of the big things you do and you learn is about repeating. There is something to the repeats. I think that is part of what is healthy to young actors. Get out and learn something just through doing that, repeating.

My grandfather was a provider. Work, any kind of work, was the joy of his life. So I grew up having a certain relationship to work. It was something that I always wanted.

A kiss is a lusty dollop of dessert to be served with desire and savored with passion.

Romantic love can be a lot of crap, though, let me tell you. And it can hurt you.

Our ability to manufacture fraud now exceeds our ability to detect it.