Al Pacino has been named the next recipient of the SAG-AFTRA Life Achievement Award.
The 86-year-old star of “Dog Day Afternoon”, “Scent of a Woman” and a trilogy of “Godfather” films is the 62nd actor to receive the highest honor handed out by the Screen Actors Guild -American Federation of Television and Radio Artists.
“I wondered and wandered most of my life but have always felt at home with a script and my fellow actors. It’s the work and the actors along the way that have been among the greatest joys of my life,” Pacino said in a statement Thursday. “It’s an honour to be recognised by SAG-AFTRA in celebrating the journey.”
He’ll pick up the prize on February 28 at the 33rd annual Actor Awards at the Shrine Auditorium in Los Angeles. The show will stream live on Netflix.
The award also honours humanitarian work, and the guild cited Pacino’s charitable efforts for disaster relief, fighting hunger and poverty and his support for local theater companies, including the Shakespeare Centre of Los Angeles.
The native New Yorker was a young actor best known for his stage work when director Francis Ford Coppola tapped him to play Michael Corleone in 1972’s “The Godfather” against the wishes of a studio that wanted an established star in the coveted part.
He would be nominated for an Oscar for the role and become regarded as one of the finest actors of his generation. He got annual Academy Award nominations for the next three years, for “Serpico”, “The Godfather Part II” and “Dog Day Afternoon”. He would not win until he took best actor for “Scent of a Woman” in 1993, a year when he was also nominated for supporting actor for “Glengarry Glen Ross”. He’s been nominated nine times overall, most recently in 2020 for “The Irishman”.
Pacino has also won two competitive Actor Awards from SAG-AFTRA, two Emmys, four Golden Globes and the Globes’ lifetime achievement honor, the Cecil B. DeMille Award.
“I have spent my life in awe and appreciation of the force of nature that is Al Pacino,” SAG-AFTRA President Sean Astin said in a statement. “When you watch him perform, you are witnessing a student and a master. Al Pacino is an artist of extraordinary courage, intensity and heart whose work has always set an exceptional standard of skill and talent. All of that and he’s just plain fun to watch.”
The SAG-AFTRA Life Achievement Award dates to 1962. Previous winners include Barbara Stanwyck, James Stewart, Pearl Bailey, Frank Sinatra, James Cagney, Katharine Hepburn, Audrey Hepburn, Paul Newman, James Earl Jones, Jane Fonda and Harrison Ford.
