Oscar-winning actor Al Pacino talks with Terry Gross about growing up in the South Bronx with a single mother and The Godfather, and why he almost passed on Part II. His new memoir is Sonny Boy.Also, we hear from Saoirse Ronan. She stars in two new films: The Outrun, about a young woman struggling to get sober, and the World War II drama, Blitz. She spoke with contributor Ann Marie Baldonado about the roles, as well as the most intense on set experience she's ever had — birthing lambs.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy
Chapter 1: What does Al Pacino share about his childhood in the Bronx?
From WHYY in Philadelphia, I'm Terry Gross with Fresh Air Weekend. Today, Al Pacino talks about the godfather and about growing up in the South Bronx with a single mother, little money, and friends who never made it out alive. He has a new memoir. Also, we hear from Saoirse Ronan. She stars in two new films, including The Outrun, about a young woman struggling with alcoholism.
To try to get sober, she moves back to her family's sheep farm in Scotland. Ronan had to learn new skills for that role.
And I was thrown straight onto the Orkney mainland and I had my hand up a ewe and was pulling a lamb out. And I did that seven times.
Ronan's other film currently in theaters is the World War II drama Blitz. Our film critic Justin Chang will have a review. That's coming up on Fresh Air Weekend. This is Fresh Air Weekend. I'm Terry Gross. My guest is Al Pacino.
Don't ask me about my business, Kate. Is it true? Don't ask me about my business. No.
Well, I'm going to ask Pacino about his business, by which I mean his art.
It sounded like a shot to me.
It did, I know. It's you slamming the table.
Oh, all right. As long as it's not a gun. I've had enough of those.
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Chapter 2: How did Al Pacino's mother influence his life?
Chapter 3: What intense experience did Saoirse Ronan have while filming?
Mo, I got an idea. Tom, Tom, you're the conciliary. You can talk to the Don. You can explain. Just a minute. Don is semi-retired and Mike is in charge of the family business now. If you have anything to say, say it to Michael. You don't come to Las Vegas and talk to a man like Mo Green like that.
Fredo, you're my older brother, and I love you. But don't ever take sides with anyone against the family again.
I just love that scene so much.
Yeah. It's interesting on radio, too.
It works. Just hearing it and not seeing it.
Yeah, it does.
Yeah.
Yeah.
That's a great idea.
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Chapter 4: Why did Al Pacino almost turn down his role in Godfather II?
Did it register on you what had happened? Did you comprehend it?
I couldn't quite at six. I knew something was up. And I was, you know, I lived with my grandmother and grandfather and my mother. And I remember them all sitting at a table. I think this was after the war. So my uncle would be there. My aunt would be there. Everybody was talking about what to do. And I remember sitting there and they let me sit there.
So I didn't quite understand what they were saying, but I knew it was a serious thing. But, you know, she came back. That must have been traumatizing too. But seeing her in the streets, somebody said to me as I'm running to see the ambulance, you know, we rarely saw ambulances coming on our block. And I saw it. And there she was on a stretcher going into the ambulance.
And I thought, of course, I couldn't believe it was my mother. These things don't happen to my mother, you know. And it was her, because they said, hey, I hear it's your mother, Sonny. It's your mother. My mother? I said, no, nothing happens to my mother. And I remember that feeling. And then the shock of seeing her in that, it was, as they say, surreal. But it's clear in my memory.
Yeah. She must have loved movies because she took you to the movies when you were... Oh, she loved everything.
My mother was very smart. She read and played the piano. I mean, very poor, of course, but she was very... intelligent. And my mother decided to go to the theater and take me to Broadway shows, among other things. But she loved Cat on a Hot Tin Roof and those kind of shows. She was very into
She took you to see, when you were five, she took you to see The Lost Weekend starring Ray Moland as this raging alcoholic. It's a great film, but he gets very self-destructive. And I don't know, you were five and then you started acting out those scenes at home? Yeah, I started acting out the scenes.
Yeah, I would act all the time. When Mom took me to the movies, I'd come back. Because we lived alone and there was nobody there to play with. So I'd act out all the parts in the films I saw. And I acted out The Lost Weekend and I showed it to my mother. My mother said, oh, what is this? And she started laughing. And then she'd show it to the families.
Or when I was somewhere, they'd say, Sonny, do The Lost Weekend. And I would do The Lost Weekend. And I never understood why they would laugh at someone in this predicament because it's where he's searching for a bottle of booze that he hid somewhere when he was sober. And now he couldn't find it when he was drunk. And now he can't find it. And he goes crazy opening drawers and stuff.
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Chapter 5: What are some memorable moments from The Godfather?
Now, you're very good at doing accents. You know, you're Scottish in The Outrun, English in Blitz. You do a specific regional accent in Brooklyn. And, of course, you do an American accent in the films Lady Bird and Little Women. I was wondering if you think about... That living in the U.S. as a baby helped you with your American accent.
So it just makes me think about language at that early age and kind of like how weird and malleable it could be.
Absolutely. I mean, I think it's not dissimilar to being bilingual. Like, you know, you're so open to everything. And so if you're exposed to lots of different sounds, then I guess your ear sort of remains open to that and your brain is tuned into that from quite an early age. So
Yeah, I think, you know, I was, as I said, I was mainly around a lot of Irish people in New York, but of course heard a lot of American accents too and was also brought up on American TV like a lot of kids are. And, you know, a lot of my friends nowadays will say that their kids, whether they're in London or Dublin or Glasgow or London,
New Zealand, you know, were so influenced by America that actually a lot of their kids are kind of brilliant at doing the American accent just through like Dora the Explorer or whatever, whatever they watch now, Paw Patrol. So, yeah, so I guess I was no different.
But I will say that it's funny, the older that I've gotten, as important as accents have always been for me, I'm actually really, really keen to just use my own now.
And I remember Andrew Scott saying that, that he spent so long, as we all do, as a lot of Irish and Celts do in particular and Northern English do, where we have to be able to do accents because there just aren't enough parts for people who sound the way we sound. So you have to be able to talk like this or have an American accent, which is, you know, frustrating.
But he said that for a long time he... He really indulged in sounding different from himself and that's sort of part of what acting is. And I felt exactly the same way. And then at a certain point in your life, you kind of think... Oh, I'm actually not that bad and I'm not completely uninteresting. And I'd quite like to explore acting without having to think about the accent.
So I've kind of gone through a period over the last few years where I've really enjoyed using my own. Well, Saoirse Ronan, thank you so much for joining us. Thank you so much. It was lovely.
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