A big celebrity birthday today as Al Pacino turns 75 on April 26. Obviously the actor is known for many iconic roles in his Hollywood career—from Michael Corleone in The Godfather franchise, to iconic drug hustler Tony Montana in Scarface, to Satan in The Devil's Advocate—and sometimes he's even played a good guy. One thing that Pacino is less renowned for is his role in music—he's not the kind of guy that starts a band when he's not starring in a blockbuster. Nonetheless, Music Times managed to round up five examples of the actor coming in contact with our subject of choice.
Scarface (1983)
More so than Miami Vice, more so than the lyrics of Rick Ross, Scarface has come to represent the Miami cocaine culture of the '80s. The role of Tony Montana has become Pacino's best-known, even trumping his role as Michael Corleone in the classic Godfather series. One of the major reasons why Scarface and lines such as "say hello to my little friend" has maintained its pop cultural relevance is because of its cult status within the hip-hop community. Houston rapper Scarface is an obvious example, and emcees such as Nas, Diddy and Snoop Dogg spoke on the film's influence for the 2003 documentary Scarface: The Origins of a Hip-Hop Classic. "I don't think anybody's ever talked about it as articulately and clearly. I understood it better having heard them talk about it," Pacino said. "I mean, they really get it and they understand it, and that's a great thing. They've been very supportive all these years. I think they've helped us tremendously." Rappers may have helped the film Al, but you'd be hard-up to find a flick that has influenced the hustle-happy culture of hip-hop more so than Scarface.
Madonna: Truth or Dare (1991)
Pacino has played the bad boy for most of his career, but can he match up with the baddest bad girl, Madonna? Depends what film you're watching. He starred as Alphonse "Big Boy" Caprice, a crime boss, in Dick Tracy, where Madonna played an entertainer alongside her real-life boyfriend Warren Beatty (in the lead role). Madonna's character, aka "The Blank," ends up kidnapping Tracy's girlfriend and rivals Caprice as a sleazy character in the film, so that film is a tie. The documentary of her 1990 "Blonde Ambition" tour makes her seem badder than Pacino in real-life however, appearing at a party alongside her Dick Tracy costars Pacino, Beatty and Mandy Patinkin, and is later seen bad-mouthing Kevin Costner.
Phil Spector (2013)
Pacino finally managed to get away from roles where he plays the villain (or antihero) and into a biographical role...where he plays one of the most notorious figures in music history. Pacino was tapped to play Phil Spector—one of the most influential producers in music, and also a bizarre individual who was found guilty in the murder of actress Lana Clarkson—in an HBO film named after the main character. There's not exactly a "good" era to play Spector in terms of making him a sympathetic character...he was always known as a bit of a kook, both in the studio and in his home...and Pacino portrayed the producer of the first few years of the new millennium, when his trial for the murder of Clarkson began. Fellow Oscar-winner Helen Mirren played his attorney, Linda Kenney Baden, and Jeffrey Tambor and Chiwetel Ejiofor also appeared.
The Philadelphia Orchestra (2015)
Pacino made an appearance at the Academy of Music Anniversary Concert and Ball, an annual coat-and-tie fundraiser for the Philadelphia Orchestra, although he was hardly expected to play an instrument. Instead, he reprised his role as Richard III from the Shakespeare play of the same name, reading the famous "winter of our discontent" monologue,while the orchestra played the score from the 1955 film version of the play behind him. Although Yannick Nézet-Séguin was conducting—having done so more than 1,500 times before—yet many of the headlines revolved around Pacino's energetic performance, where he almost seemed to be stealing the conducting role from Nézet-Séguin.
Danny Collins (2015)
Pacino's most recent performance has been as a musician. Danny Collins is a drama featuring Pacino as the title-character, a '70s rock musician based on folkie Steve Tilston, who hasn't yet dropped his hard-living lifestyle even 40 years after being at the prime of his career. However his manager (Christopher Plummer) discovers a letter that had been written to Collins by John Lennon 40 years earlier, and finally delivered it. The discovery and the words of The Beatles songwriter inspires Pacino's character to turn his life around.
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