Profile
Photos
Comments
@import url(https://graphics8.nytimes.com/css/article/screen/print.css);
Al Pacino Honored as Rome Film Festival Starts
Filed at 9:38 a.m. ET
ROME (Reuters) - A lifetime achievement award for Oscar-winning actor Al
Pacino kicked off the Rome film festival on Wednesday, bringing a Hollywood
veteran to the movie showcase which this year has a markedly European
flavor.
Pacino received the award as one of the great alumni of New York's Actors
Studio -- the celebrated drama school where he and other actors like Robert
De Niro, the late Paul
Newman and Marilyn
Monroe learned the ropes of the business.
He also took questions from members of the public -- a trademark feature of
the Rome festival where audiences get to meet their favorite stars.
The 68-year-old, who comes from a family of Italian immigrants to America,
was nominated for an Oscar eight times for films like "The Godfather," "Serpico"
and "Dog Day Afternoon."
He won the golden statuette once, as best actor for his portrayal of a blind
man in "Scent of a Woman" (1992).
Currently Pacino is on the big screen with "Righteous Kill," where he and De
Niro play two veteran cops on the trail of a serial killer in a film that was
panned by the critics.
"It's hard to put on a suit, and getting harder -- with shirt and tie," he
joked at a press conference, saying he was thrilled about the award.
"You feel as though someone is giving you a party and you don't quite know
what you did to deserve it," he added.
He also spoke about "Salomaybe?," his third film as a director and an
adaptation of Oscar
Wilde's once banned play, and one of his most controversial works,
"Salome."
"I pondered it and played with it for a few years ... I am still working on
it, it's coming along," he said, adding he hoped to present it in Rome next
year.
Pacino said he was "not crazy about making films" and saw himself as a
performer, preferring theater stages to film sets.
Playing with a famous quote by Tony Montana, the drugs boss in one of his
best-known films, "Scarface," he said good actors need not be good liars.
"In life we act, but in our art we go for the truth," he said.