On a bright day overlooking Beverly Hills, Al Pacino recalls a warning from years ago, from his therapist: "He said, 'Don't go to L.A., Al!'"But here is, and even now, at 84, he's still adjusting to that Hollywood life."You have to learn how famous you are," he said.Has he? "What, now? I'm trying!" he laughed.
"What do you want from me? I actually put a tie on to see you.That's what famous guys do!"He's more than "famous." He's Al Pacino, with nine Oscar nominations, seven straight without a win, until "Scent of a Woman." Plus, two Emmys, two Tonys, a Kennedy Center Honor, and a life achievement award from the American Film Institute.
He's been a leading man in the movies, and a character actor, for nearly 55 years."I'm an old fella, you know?" he laughed.
"When I have my hair now and I go out and someone takes a picture of me, all you see is, like, a white hydrant! A white fire hydrant! I don't feel I'm gray yet.I don't want to be gray.
I'm that guy in the book cover."That guy on the book cover is finally telling his own story.It's in his new memoir, "Sonny Boy." That's what his mom, Rose, called him.They lived with Al's grandparents in a three-room walk-up in the South Bronx.
Rose kept her Sonny Boy in when his friends tempted him with the streets.Pacino recalled that when his buddies would call for him to go out, on a school night, "She said, 'No, no.' And I was so upset.
So angry at her.I think she was part of what saved my life, and kept me off drugs.
I couldn't go out.I went to school." If his mother saved his life, another woman changed it.
"Blanche Rothstein, who was my eighth grade teacher, actually came to my apartment, and she sat down and talked to my grandmother," he said."What she said, I don't know, but I think it finally came down to, 'You should encourage this boy to do what he's doing, the acting.
You have to.He is made to do this.'"Good reviews came very early – at 13, after a school show, a stranger ca...