“They Didn't Want Me”: Al Pacino Thought He Would Be Fired From One of the Greatest Movies Ever Made

With more than five dozen major film and television projects under his belt, two Emmys, two Tonys, an Oscar, and a tribute from the Kennedy Center Honors, it’s obvious that Al Pacino is pretty good at this acting thing.

However, everyone has to get their start somewhere, and Pacino’s career was almost derailed at the very beginning when he was almost fired from the 1972 classic The Godfather.

The Godfather Came at the Perfect Time for Al Pacino

By the early 1970s, Al Pacino was a rising stage star, having performed in a number of theatrical productions since 1967, including Awake and Sing! at Boston’s Charles Playhouse, Does a Tiger Wear a Necktie? at New York’s Belasco Theater (his Broadway debut, which won him his first Tony), and The Basic Training of Pavlo Hummel at New York’s Open Circle Theater (which earned him his second Tony).

However, before The Godfather came out, he only had a small handful of on-screen acting roles under his belt. The first, a single episode of the procedural series N.Y.P.D., where they embarrassingly misspelled his name as “Al Paccino,” highlights what an unknown he was at the time. This was followed by just two film roles. After being ninth billed in the 1969 Patty Duke dramedy Me, Natalie , he had just taken on his first lead role in 1971’s The Panic in Needle Park.

Needle Park was nominated for the Palme d’Or at Cannes, but its mixed-positive reviews and unimpressive box office performance didn’t necessarily set up Pacino for success. When he got The Godfather , it was by far his biggest role at the time. Any young actor would be lucky to have their third-ever movie role be a second lead opposite an Oscar winner, let alone an Oscar winner who is screen legend Marlon Brando.

It Was Difficult to Get Al Pacino Hired on The Godfather

Once Al Pacino was cast in The Godfather , however, the road ahead wasn’t all sunshine and daisies. Getting the role as crime family scion Michael Corleone was just the first hurdle of many.

In a section of his 2024 memoir Sonny Boy that was shared online via The Guardian, Pacino remembers his struggles on the set of the landmark Francis Ford Coppola movie. From the beginning, playing Michael wasn’t a given. Even though Pacino had the full-throated support of Coppola himself, the legendary director was also wet behind the ears at the time, to the point that Pacino was surprised that Paramount was letting him helm such a lavish production in the first place.

Immediately, he learned that “Paramount didn’t want me.” They wanted a bigger star to play Michael, though their preferred actors - like Jack Nicholson (who had already starred in Easy Rider , Five Easy Pieces , and Carnal Knowledge), Robert Redford (who was fresh off the Oscar-winning megahit Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid), Warren Beatty (whose work in Bonnie and Clyde had already established him as a major star), and Ryan O’Neal (who had just been nominated for an Oscar for the zeitgeist-defining smash Love Story) - didn’t match the way author Mario Puzo described Michael in the original bestselling novel upon which the movie was based.

Pacino knew how low he was on the totem pole because Paramount (where there was a lot of infighting over how much was riding on the success of the movie) was also trying to reject the casting of bigger stars, James Caan (as Sonny Corleone), Robert Duvall (as Tom Hagen), and even Brando himself (as Vito Corleone). The young actor was forced to jump through hoops, including doing his first-ever screen test, but eventually he booked the gig. Once filming began, however, the hurdles kept coming.

Why Al Pacino Was Almost Fired From The Godfather

The first scenes that were shot on The Godfather were from the wedding sequence, including an expository scene that Pacino didn’t feel confident about being viewed in isolation. It was a little too low-key, and it was during an early part of the character’s arc where his energy was much lower and calmer than where Pacino was planning to take it by the end, as Michael slowly emerges as a power player in the family.

‘The Godfather’ (1972)Credit: Paramount Pictures

Naturally, this was the time when Paramount started to look at the dailies. They were apparently very unhappy with the way Pacino was playing Michael. Rumors began to spread that the actor was about to be fired, making his interactions with the crew stiff and awkward. Word was that Coppola would also be let go because “he was the one responsible for me being in the film.”

The gig that Pacino and Coppola had worked so hard to secure seemed like it was going to go up in a puff of smoke. It didn’t help that the young actor knew he was easily replaceable. Even if Coppola pushed back against one of the unsuitable big stars that Paramount wanted, a number of other major rising stars had already read for the part at one point or another, including Martin Sheen and Dustin Hoffman.

Pacino then recalls a harrowing visit with Coppola, where the director told him, “You’re not cutting it.” However, the shooting schedule was eventually rearranged so that Pacino could shoot the restaurant scene where Michael exacts revenge on Sollozzo (Al Lettieri) and McCluskey (Sterling Hayden ) , showing the character at a later point in his arc.

‘The Godfather’ (1972)Credit: Paramount Pictures

While filming his escape during that sequence, Pacino twisted his ankle and felt a sudden, strange sense of relief. He figured the injury could be his excuse to leave the project, explaining that “showing up for work every day, feeling unwanted, feeling like an underling, was an oppressive experience.”

However, the crew brought in a stunt double to finish out the scene and helped Pacino recover so he could continue shooting. The dailies then made their way to Paramount, and “because of that scene I just performed, they kept me in the film.”

The Godfather Role Was Worth Fighting For

Naturally, history proved Coppola right that Al Pacino was the perfect person to play Michael Corleone. Pacino was eventually nominated for an Oscar for his performance (one of 10 nominations that the movie earned - it ultimately won three, including Best Picture) and went on to reprise the role in 1974’s The Godfather Part II__(which also won Best Picture, becoming the first sequel to ever do so) and 1990’s The Godfather Part III__.__

‘The Godfather Part III’ (1990)Credit: Paramount Pictures

The Godfather ’s massive success (it also earned more than $250 million against its roughly $7 million budget) kickstarted Pacino’s now-legendary career, which has so far seen him nominated for an additional eight Oscar nominations, for his performances in Serpico , The Godfather Part II , Dog Day Afternoon , And Justice for All , Dick Tracy , Glengarry Glen Ross , Scent of a Woman(for which he finally won), and The Irishman.

So while we all have to thank The Godfather for many things, we also must be grateful to Coppola for fighting to stick with Al Pacino during a turbulent production. Sound off in the comments below about your favorite Al Pacino movie, which might never have existed if he had been fired from the 1972 classic.