Al Pacino Marlon Brando The Godfather publicity photo 1972 Canvas Print

"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." - Al Pacino, 1940

[on Al Pacino] "didn't say much to Pacino when we were making The Godfather (1972), but I not only consider him one of the best actors in America, but in the world. I never meant anything more in my life."

"An actor is at most a poet and at least an entertainer."

"The only reason I'm in Hollywood is that I don't have the moral courage to refuse the money."

"I don't mind that I'm fat. You still get the same money."

"Acting is the expression of a neurotic impulse. It's a bum's life. Quitting acting, that's the sign of maturity."

"To grasp the full significance of life is the actor's duty, to interpret it is his problem, and to express it his dedication."

"Acting is an illusion, a form of histrionic slight of hand, and in order to ca...

I first became obsessed with photography and motion pictures while growing up in post WW2 Manila in the Philippine Islands in the late 1940's/early 1950's. Film noirs were a particular influence. But my first love remains the theater. I acted in numerous amateur productions from 1958 to 1978. In 1979 I earned a MA in drama from the University of Arizona; earlier getting a BA in English from the University of Minnesota, where I co-founded the first film society on campus and ran it for four years. While at the U of A, I studied with the master black and white photo essayist W. Eugene Smith (1918-1978) the last year of his life. I am the last person cited in Jim Hughes' definitive biography of Gene, as I wrote about attending his final...