Al Pacino sets record straight on why he “didn’t show up” to Oscars

Actor Al Pacino revealed on Saturday that he didn’t show up to the Oscars in 1973 due to his complicated relationship with fame.

In 1973, Pacino famously missed the 45th Academy Awards, despite receiving a Best Supporting Actor nomination for his role as Michael Corleone in The Godfather.

For a long time, the Hollywood rumor mill has claimed Pacino snubbed the ceremony because he believed he should have received a Best Actor nomination like his co-star Marlon Brando.

However, in an interview on BBC Radio 2 with British-Irish presenter Dermot O’Leary, Pacino set the record straight—saying he skipped the ceremony due to his struggles with fame.

Comparing himself with the novelist Jack Kerouac who was said to be “embarrassed by fame,” Pacino told O’Leary he had a “little of that” embarrassment in him.

“So, I didn’t show up to a couple of the Oscars and I get a reputation because they thought, somebody said and my representation said, ‘Oh Pacino’s not going because he’s not the leading actor, he’s a supporting actor for the Oscar….’ Can you imagine me saying, ‘I don’t want to go because I should be up there with Brando’? It’s just not in my nature, it’s nowhere near it. And I knew that I didn’t want to go because it scared me, frankly. I was working in Boston in the theatre and I was afraid,” Pacino told O’Leary.

Describing his fear, Pacino explained, “Because feeling out of place is a strange feeling. I mean not being able to function because you don’t know the language, in a way, it’s a precarious place to be in. And I experienced it a few times because I was very famous and didn’t even know it.”

Pacino, who was nominated for nine Oscars before eventually winning one in 1993 for Best Actor for his role in Scent of a Woman, confessed his struggles with fame began before he got the 1973 Oscars nomination.

In 1972, Pacino won the National Board of Review (NBR) Best Supporting Actor for his role in The Godfather but told O’Leary on BBC Radio 2 that he had an unconventional response to winning.

“I was in Boston doing a play, and I was staying over the director’s house, he gave me a room at his house,” Pacino explained. “I remember waking up and he said, ‘You won the National Board of Review Award for acting in The Godfather,’ and I remember saying to him at the time, ‘Wow sure that’s cool.’ I said, ‘Do you know a psychiatrist I can see?’ Right out of my mouth because that’s the state I was in.”

Pacino is currently doing the press rounds to promote his new memoir Sonny Boy. In his memoir, Pacino also addresses the “appalling” Oscars rumor, saying he only learned about it years later.

“I’ve only recently learned that the perception in the industry was that I snubbed the Oscars – that I didn’t attend the ceremony because I was nominated for The Godfather as a supporting actor and not as a leading man. That somehow I felt slighted because I thought I deserved to be nominated in the same category as Marlon,” Pacino wrote.

He then explains that the rumor explains some of the “distance” he felt whenever he visited Hollywood.

“It was appalling to learn it now, having missed all these opportunities to deny it, not even knowing that this is what people thought of me,” the actor added.

Newsweek has reached out to Pacino’s representatives via email for comment.

In the book, Pacino also reveals he feared he would be dropped from The Godfather after director Francis Ford Coppola told him he was not “cutting it.”

However, the film trilogy turned out to be his breakthrough, for which he was nominated for two Academy Awards, two Golden Globes and two BAFTAs.

You can listen to Pacino’s full BBC Radio 2 interview with O’Leary here.