Diane Keaton Al Pacino The Godfather set 1972
by David Lee Guss
Title
Diane Keaton Al Pacino The Godfather set 1972
Artist
David Lee Guss
Medium
Photograph - Photography
Description
"I think that people who are famous tend to be underdeveloped in their humanity skills."
"I find the same thing sexy in a man now as I always have: humor. I love it when they are funny. It's to die for.'
'I build a wall around myself. I'm hard to get to know. Any trait you have, it gets worse as you go along."
"I think about dying every single day. I've lost lots of friends, and they die in the most bizarre ways. It's like, 'That can't possibly be! How could that have happened?' And all I can think is, "That could have been me."
"When I was younger I had these enormous vanities about what I expected from myself. I'm glad to have a comfortable and fascinating life, but now I see it for what it is, so I can be braver and more spontaneous and say to myself, "Oh, screw it, just go out there and do it.'"
"I just have to keep going back to the core and think that we're all afraid of it and when we're afraid of it, you run to something much easier, something that looks like candy."
[Regarding getting drug shots before each performance of the 1968 rock musical, "Hair"] "At the time it was astonishing to have a job. It was odd. Before the show opened we got a shot by a doctor Bishop. A vitamin shot, only it was not vitamins. It was like methamphetamines. You were flying. A lot of people got addicted."
"When I first got to know Woody and I was going out with him, I noticed that people never wanted to hear anything that I had to say at all. They just wanted to be in the shadow of his light and I remember really having a hard time with that."
"Don't give up on yourself. So you make a mistake here and there; you do too much or you do too little. Just have fun. Smile. And keep putting on lipstick." Diane Keaton, 1946
"The problem with me is, I guess, the way I express myself, you have to be with me 50 years before you can get a sense of what I'm talking about."
"I like what Norman Mailer said about alcohol: 'Drink has killed a lot of my brain cells and I think I would have been a better writer without it, but it would be one less way to relax."
"Did you know I started out as a stand-up comic? People don't believe me when I tell them."
[on whether acting and his roles reflected who he is] "In the end you're just playing a role."
"I hope the perception is that I'm an actor, I never intended to be a movie star."
"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."
"I guess you find yourself repeating certain motifs. But at the heart of it all, I'm an actor, always looking for a role. And then you try to make things fresh."
"But I was just lucky. People like [Francis Ford Coppola] were making films, and I got opportunities."
by Robert Osborne in "Academy Awards 1974 Oscar Annual"] "I couldn't exist just doing films. But on the other hand, there is the fame that comes with it, and the money. My problem is I still want to play Hamlet in some little theater somewhere, and time is running out."
[on his friend and Heat (1995) co-star Robert De Niro] "I remember seeing things that Bob had done in the past, and very recent times, and have been taken with the work so much that I even wrote [him] about it. Some of his great work -- which is plenty -- I was staggered by the subtlety of his portrayal and the warmth, which is what we often talk about with Bob among us actors who admire him so. It is the warmth and the way he approaches things."
"The actor becomes an emotional athlete. The process is painful -- my personal life suffers."
"My first language was shy. It's only by having been thrust into the limelight that I have learned to cope with my shyness."
[When asked what romantic character he would want to be] [Pablo Picasso]. "I love the idea that he used to just sit and stare at an empty canvas for as long as 12 hours straight. If you keep staring at the canvas, the hope is that something or someone will come to mind. That's a romantic notion in itself."
[on The Godfather: Part III (1990)] "You know what the problem with that film is? The real problem? Nobody wants to see Michael have retribution and feel guilty. That's not who he is. In the other scripts, in Michael's mind he is avenging his family and saving them. Michael never thinks of himself as a gangster - not as a child, not while he is one and not afterward. That is not the image he has of himself. He's not a part of the Goodfellas (1990) thing. Michael has this code; he lives by something that makes audiences respond. But once he goes away from that and starts crying over coffins, making confessions and feeling remorse, it isn't right. I applaud [Francis Ford Coppola] for trying to get to that, but Michael is so frozen in that image. There is in him a deep feeling of having betrayed his mother by killing his brother. That was a mistake. And we are ruled by these mistakes in life as time goes on. He was wrong. Like in Scarface (1983) when Tony kills Manny - that is wrong, and he pays for it. And in his way, Michael pays for it."
[on Julie Christie] "The most poetic of actresses."
"The only problem is, I don't have the appetite to make my own pictures. I don't want to direct. So I'm always in a kind of passive position, waiting for someone to come to me with a project... That I sort of don't like."
[on Jack Lemmon] ":Jack was the most selfless actor I've ever worked with. He was the most considerate and the most generous. He cared a great deal about what he was doing. He was a complete actor who gave 150 percent. But the remarkable thing about Jack was that he kept growing. So his best work was his latest work."
[on making The Godfather (1972)] "Every time I'd run into Marlon Brando on set, my face would turn red and I'd start laughing...have you any idea what it was like to do a scene with Brando? I sat in movie houses when I was a kid watching Brando in A Streetcar Named Desire (1951) and Viva Zapata! (1952). Now I'm playing a scene with him. He's God, man!"
"It surprised me, the feeling I got when I won the Oscar for Scent of a Woman (1992). 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. It's like you've won a race and everybody knows you won. It's a wonderful feeling, a complete feeling."
":An actor with too much money will usually find a way to get rid of it."
"He who persists at his folly will one day be wise."
"After every movie, Humphrey Bogart -- even at the end -- was very worried he'd never get another part. If you don't get the job, there's no work, there's no outlet, there's no expression, there's no painting. You just live and hope that another day will come with a role that will serve as a canvas for you."
"Gary Cooper was kind of a phenomenon - his ability to take something and elevate it, give it such dignity. One of the great presences. Charles Laughton was my favorite. Jack Nicholson has that kind of persona; he's also a fine actor. Robert Mitchum's great. Lee Marvin, too. These guys are terrific actors."
(1979, on Marlon Brando) "There's no doubt every time I see Brando that I'm looking at a great actor. 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 remember when I first saw On the Waterfront. I had to see it again, right there. I couldn't move, I couldn't leave the theater. I had never seen the likes of it. I couldn't believe it."
[on people considering him a legend] "I'm very flattered to hear that, that compliment. I don't think of myself as anything but an actor struggling to find the next role and when I do get the role to try and see if I can find any way into it.":
"With young actors I learn from them, just as hopefully I always will. If I were to advise them in some way, I would say this is a craft that you just have to keep doing. Do it whenever you can and you shouldn't spend too much time dealing with the fact that there's a world out there with a lot of competition. You have to educate yourself. You have to read. You have to see things that are inspiring to you."
"I'm the same now as I've always been - sort of a recluse. People resent me for remaining myself when they think I should be acting like a superstar. I never wanted to be an actor and I don't particularly enjoy it. I have to act. There just isn't anything else for me."
[on the tough neighborhood he grew up in] "They used to call it Fort Apache - the 41st Precinct. But that was the start of the heroin thing. Around 1948 that's when the drugs came into New York. That's when the trouble started. Of all my dearest, closest friends from that time, none of them survived."
[on his acting teacher Lee Strasberg] ":Someone said to him: 'Oh, I know you.' He replied: 'You know my name. You don't know me.'"
[on working with Marlon Brando in The Godfather (1972)] "I loved him. He was such a sensitive person. He saw the difficulties I was having and I think he saw a little of himself when he was young. I was in awe. I remember once he came up behind me and gave me a little massage. 'You okay?' he'd say."
[on The Godfather trilogy] "A long, awful, tiring story."
"I asked God for a bike, but I know God doesn't work that way. So I stole a bike and asked for forgiveness."
[on directing] "I have worked with many great film directors and seen that there is a level of film-making that I can never get to so I don't even bother. I just enjoy engaging in film as an amateur. I don't have the pressure of having to deliver. I am off the hook.:"
[on one's career] "I think that the idea of resurgence is wonderful. But basically I think it's just luck. Also, if you start to say, 'How about if I made a movie with this person who is really a good director?' or 'How about if I did a movie about something that I feel I've got something to say about?' These things happen and I feel you're lucky when it happens."
[on Diane Keaton getting him back into movies after a four-year hiatus in the 1980s] I'd probably be a short-order cook right now if it wasn't for Diane. I'd become kind of detached from everything and I was enjoying a life out of the mix. She's the one who found Sea of Love (1989) and told me I should do it. She said, 'You're not on the A-list anymore, buddy. Are you going to go back to living in a rooming house? You've been rich too long. You're an adult now.'"
[on becoming famous] "The reaction wasn't positive. I was catapulted out of a cannon. People are more accepting of fame today because of all the media outlets. Young people even aspire to it. I became more aware of myself, constantly reminded that I had this name because strangers kept calling me by it. Being an outsider is part of being an artist. You try to conform. But some of us just can't. I didn't know what was expected of me. I still don't." - Al Pacino, 1940
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November 20th, 2015
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