In the captivating new memoir “Sonny Boy”, legendary actor Al Pacino takes readers on an intimate journey through his remarkable life and career, from his hardscrabble childhood in the South Bronx to becoming one of the most iconic and influential actors of his generation. With raw honesty and vivid detail, Pacino offers a rare glimpse into the man behind the unforgettable roles that have defined American cinema for over five decades.
A Bronx Tale: Pacino’s Early Years
The memoir’s most compelling sections delve into Pacino’s formative years growing up in the gritty streets of the South Bronx in the 1940s and 50s. Born to Italian-American parents who separated when he was just two years old, young Pacino found solace and inspiration in the movies, often his only escape from the struggles of his working-class upbringing.
Pacino vividly renders the sights, sounds, and characters of his old neighborhood, where he ran with a scrappy gang of friends, experimented with drugs and alcohol, and discovered his passion for acting in school plays. Despite the temptations of the streets, Pacino credits his strict but loving mother for keeping him on a straighter path.
“My mother was overworked, overtired and overlooked, but never stopped believing in me,” Pacino writes. “She parried me away from the path that led to delinquency, danger and violence.”
From the Bronx to Broadway and Beyond
As a young man, Pacino threw himself into acting with single-minded devotion, taking classes, performing in off-Broadway productions, and reciting Shakespeare in deserted alleyways. His big break came at age 26 when he was admitted to the prestigious Actors Studio, where he studied under legendary acting teacher Lee Strasberg.
The book traces Pacino’s meteoric rise in the 1970s, from his star-making turns in The Godfather, Serpico, and Dog Day Afternoon, to his later iconic roles in films like Scarface and Scent of a Woman, for which he finally won an Oscar in 1993. Pacino shares fascinating behind-the-scenes anecdotes from these films, like his tense confrontation with Godfather director Francis Ford Coppola during a wedding scene in Sicily.
“What can you do?” an exasperated Coppola shouted at him after Pacino admitted he couldn’t dance or drive a car for key scenes. Pacino’s improvised solutions to these on-set challenges offer a window into his creative process and sheer persuasive power as an actor.
The Man Behind the Roles
While Pacino dutifully chronicles his film career and high-profile romances with actresses like Tuesday Weld and Kathleen Quinlan, some of the book’s most revealing passages explore his lifelong commitment to the craft of acting, especially his stage work. He writes movingly of the four years he spent making a documentary on Richard III, calling it the happiest time of his life.
Pacino is starkly honest about his struggles with depression and alcohol, and the book takes on a wistful tone as he reflects on the divergent fates of his Bronx boyhood friends, three of whom died young from drug overdoses. An old neighborhood pal once called Pacino “a miracle” for making it out – a sentiment the actor humbly deflects.
“I didn’t believe that, of course,” he writes. “But I knew what he was saying. My whole life was a moon shot.”
In the end, what shines through most in “Sonny Boy” is Pacino’s enduring passion for his craft and gratitude for the unlikely journey that led him from a South Bronx tenement to cinematic immortality. It’s a bracingly honest and subtly moving self-portrait of an artist as a young, and now old, man.
“I’m 84, but I still see myself as that boy roaming the Bronx,” the book concludes. “The one who doggedly pursued his dream and against all odds, found himself living it…I always believed that the higher I rose, the more I wanted to elevate the audience, to leave them with the sense that the impossible becomes possible.”
For anyone who has ever marveled at the soulful intensity and raw genius of an Al Pacino performance, “Sonny Boy” offers an intimate and unforgettable look at the remarkable man and miracle behind them.
