Pacino cleaned dance halls to earn free acting classes
Long before Michael Corleone made him famous, Alfredo Pacino slept in theaters and cleaned hallways at HB Studio for free lessons. Rejected once by the Actors Studio, he later studied method acting under Lee Strasberg and built a stage career that won him Tonys before Hollywood called.
Alfredo James Pacino was born on April 25, 1940, in East Harlem, Manhattan, the only child of Sicilian American parents Rose and Salvatore Pacino. After they divorced when he was two, his mother raised him in the South Bronx with grandparents who had emigrated from Corleone. She nicknamed him Sonny Boy after an Al Jolson song and took him to movies so young that he rehearsed characters' lines in his head. A junior-high teacher, Blanche Rothstein, cast him in school plays and told his grandmother he was made for acting—a moment he later called life-changing.
He left for the High School of Performing Arts over his mother's objections, then scraped by as a messenger, busboy, janitor, and postal clerk while acting in basement shows. The Actors Studio rejected him as a teenager; HB Studio let him study for free if he scrubbed floors. Charlie Laughton became his mentor. After four years there he finally entered the Actors Studio under Lee Strasberg. In 1962 his mother died at forty-three; his grandfather died the next year. Pacino, twenty-two, called it the lowest point of his life.
Stage breakthroughs followed: an Obie for The Indian Wants the Bronx in 1968, then a Tony for Does a Tiger Wear a Necktie? in 1969. Manager Martin Bregman steered him toward The Godfather, Serpico, and Dog Day Afternoon. Francis Ford Coppola cast him as Michael Corleone in 1972 despite studio preference for bigger names. He later won Best Actor for Scent of a Woman in 1992 and earned the Triple Crown of Acting—Oscar, Tony, and Emmy—while films featuring him have grossed over three billion dollars worldwide.
Source: Al Pacino
