But every actor knew about it, and I think the studio was forcing him to look, from what I understood of it. Were you guys competitive with each other? De Niro: It’s not that you’re competitive. Unbelievably, I saw this guy, I thought, Wow, he’s got such charisma. Pacino: I remember the meeting very clearly. And you were maybe a couple years older than me. What’s the earliest memory that you guys have of each other? De Niro: Well, when we met, I think I was in my mid-20s. ĭe Niro: Was that the time you were doing the documentary you were showing me? It was, I would say, more of a happier period in my life than I remember. But I did feel a little… You know what they say: out of sight, out of mind. I had to earn.ĭid you learn anything from taking a break? Pacino: I remember how wonderful it felt to even sort of contemplate anonymity. And then the truth is I needed to go work. But somewhere in the back of my head, I always felt I could work. A bit of the bloom was off the rose for me, artistically and expressively. Why’d you decide not to do it anymore? Pacino: It was just kind of an impulse. ![]() But every actor knew about it, and I think the studio was forcing him to look. “It's not that you're competitive,” De Niro says about his long friendship with Pacino. So there’s these mini revelations that come along. But now when I look at it, I understand some things I just didn’t then. I didn’t even think of doing King Lear, which I was offered 10 years ago. So it’s a funny kind of thing, when those awarenesses start to creep in on you without knowing it. And suddenly, you say, “Well, let me pick it up and start looking at it and reading it.” And you find there are things in it you understand more that you didn’t before. I’ve been approached to do that several times now. I’m doing roles and thinking about doing things like King Lear. Or is it because that’s what you get sent in the mail? Pacino: No, totally because of their thematic material. I wondered if you were doing those parts because you felt a certain kind of affinity. You’re on a great run of playing prideful men at the end of their lives: Danny Collins, The Humbling, Manglehorn. It’s fascinating what you said, Al, about age dictating parts somewhat. Because with us, we don’t just go home and write. ![]() ![]() Pacino: But it has a lot to do with choices, it has a lot to do with the kind of roles you get. Maybe: “You look good to still be alive.” You can’t lie about your own age! Actually, that expression “You look good for your age” comes in. When celebrities have birthdays, it’s all over the news. Pacino: Well, this is what we’re plagued with, you have to understand. If someone wants to know your age, they can look it up. What do you think that guy is? How much time does he have left?Īlso, you’re Al Pacino. Pacino: Yeah, when you leave, we’ll go over it. (Somehow this is Pacino’s first role in a Scorsese film, and the first time the three men-along with their costars Pesci and Harvey Keitel-have made something all together.) The movie has the feel of an old and august gang reuniting for one last job and looking back, sometimes ambivalently, on many lifetimes of work about violence and love and loss. In The Irishman-based on Charles Brandt’s true-crime book I Heard You Paint Houses, about the disappearance of Jimmy Hoffa (played in the film by Pacino) and the underworld into which he disappeared (represented by the hit man Frank Sheeran, played by De Niro)-the two men give surprisingly emotional performances, suffused by their history with each other and, in De Niro’s case, with Scorsese. In the interim, both De Niro and Pacino made innumerable classics, and also 2008’s Righteous Kill, the first film in which they shared multiple scenes. It wasn’t until most of the way through 1995’s Heat that they finally appeared in the same frame of the same film, facing off across a diner table, and even then it was for only a few electric minutes. In 1974 they both starred-in separate timelines that never intersect-in The Godfather Part II.
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