Al Pacino says: “It's fun” to be a new father at 84

The godfather was never a godfather.

At least he's pretty sure that's the case.

Al Pacino, one of the greatest movie stars of all time, sits in a suite at a Beverly Hills hotel, looking surprised at the thought that this is an honor that has eluded him.

“I’m not convinced, but I don’t hang around people who would ask me that, I guess,” he muses.

“I don’t remember anyone ever asking me that.”

If you're Al Pacino's godson and he's forgotten, as his character Michael Corleone famously said in The Godfather, “It's nothing personal.”

Pacino has been spending a lot of time looking back on his life lately, as at the age of 84, the star of films like “Dog Day Afternoon,” “Heat” and “The Irishman” has released his autobiography titled “Sonny Boy.” written after his mother's name.

He explains that “one of the reasons” he wanted to put his life on paper was because last year, at the age of 83, he became a father for the fourth time – to a boy named Roman, now 16 months old.

The book is a guarantee that the baby will have the opportunity to learn about his father's history.

“I want to be there for this child. And I hope so,” he shares.

“I hope I stay healthy, and of course he knows who his father is.”

Pacino, who never married, is no longer with Roman's mother, film producer Noor Alfallah, but they are children together. However, according to him, his daily engagement is largely limited to online contacts.

“He texts me from time to time,” Pacino says of Roman.

“Everything he does is real. Everything he does is interesting to me. So let's talk. In the other video I play the harmonica with him and we made a connection that way. So it’s fun.”

Al Pacino is once again winning hearts and minds with an appearance on the big screen.

Friends have contacted Al Pacino and asked him why he wrote his memoirs, and he admits he “kind of regrets it.”

He had turned down several offers over the years, but decided that now “enough has happened in my life that it might be interesting enough for someone to read.”

He found it particularly pleasant to look back on his childhood when he grew up in New York's South Bronx.

And it's clear he has no problem revisiting his biggest films.

It's been more than 50 years since Francis Ford Coppola's The Godfather made Pacino famous. The sequel “The Godfather Part II” celebrates its 50th anniversary in December. Both films won Best Picture at the Oscars. (There was also “The Godfather Part III” in 1990, which according to Pacino had “problems”).

The truth is that Pacino was almost not one of them.

Things were very different back then. He was literally almost made an offer he couldn't refuse.

Pacino sits back with a beaming smile and gleefully recounts how he was on the verge of being fired in the first two weeks of filming: “When your director talks to you and says, 'You know, I had a lot of trust in you. What happens? You don't deliver.'

“And you hear the chirping everywhere. You start to feel: I don’t think I’m wanted here.”

The studio put pressure on Coppola to replace Pacino, whose performance they felt was weak.

Everything would change with the filming of one of The Godfather's most famous scenes, in which his character Michael Corleone uses a gun hidden in a restaurant toilet to kill a mafia boss and a corrupt police officer – a sequence that would inspire Pacino allowed the power to be unleashed in a performance that is now considered an all-time classic.

He believes Coppola moved the scene up in the shooting schedule: “Go to the core, because that's what the studio wanted to see.”

“He now claims he didn’t do it,” laughs Pacino.

In any case, it changed his life.

He then shares a fascinating theory about who would have replaced him if he had been fired.

He pauses: “Bob De Niro comes to mind.”

This would certainly have changed film history – Robert De Niro joined the Godfather series a film earlier and played Michael rather than young Vito.

“Yeah, sure. Why not?” Pacino chuckles. “Well, you know, I'm not irreplaceable.”

However, it is 1983's “Scarface” that seems to hold a special place in his heart.

“It has something. “It was powerful,” he beams when the violent, cocaine-fueled gangster film is brought up, describing its rise from box office hit and Razzie nominee to cult classic as “a happy story.”

“It was the hip-hop community that embraced it and could see the story in it,” he says, noting that the film broke VHS sales records.

When I put to him the theory that perhaps this is the film he would have liked to have won his Oscar for, rather than his triumph a decade later for playing a blind veteran in Scent of a Woman, he replies, “Yes, “That’s interesting,” adding, “Yes. I would have even liked to have been nominated,” before backtracking a little with “Not that I’m turning my back on Scent of a Woman.”

But the implication is clear.

What's also clear throughout the interview is how much Pacino still loves the big screen.

Even though box office ticket sales have fallen 40% in a decade, he can't imagine a Los Angeles without movie theaters.

“This can’t happen.”

He pauses before repeating “It can’t happen,” then reciting a list of directors (one in his 60s and two in his 80s) who he believes will keep the theater safe: “That That's what Scorsese does.” That's what Tarantino does. Francis Coppola does it.”

The latter is a particularly bold choice considering Coppola's current self-financed film, Megalopolis, is considered one of the biggest box office flops of all time.

Pacino would do well to remember the classic Godfather quote: “A friend should always underestimate your virtues.”

However, there is something deeply reassuring when he sums up why he believes everything will be fine for cinema by saying, “Maybe it's my age.” Things move on and then they change, because that are we.”

He's also very cautious about using AI to recreate his likeness after his death: “My children will take over when I'm gone and they'll take care of it. I trust them.”

He won't dictate what he can and can't wear, shrugging his shoulders while saying, “I don't care.”

Our 45 minutes turned into almost 1 hour and 20 minutes as it was clear to see how much he enjoyed telling stories.

Highlights included his long story about how he believes he died during the pandemic after collapsing in his home.

(“People now think I don't believe in the afterlife because I said I didn't see anything. No white tunnels. Maybe there's no afterlife for me, but maybe someone else is going somewhere because “They did what I didn't do.”)

He also likes to talk in detail about how he found out in 2011 that his bank accounts were empty.

(“I was out of money. It was gone and my accountant was in jail. I was spending $400,000 a month and didn’t know it was happening. You must be stupid.”)

And when it comes to the question of what he's watching, Pacino just streamed the second season of the Netflix series Monster, which is about the Menendez brothers. That morning he handwritten a letter to Javier Bardem congratulating him on his achievement.

Leonardo DiCaprio and Adam Driver are two other younger actors he truly admires, while he sums up his own career with the borrowed quote: “The standouts usually have me with a gun. They say give Pacino a gun. You took a hit.”

Oh, and he reveals that Jamie Foxx is the best chess player in Hollywood. Pacino used to play a lot and laughs when I ask if he ever faced Robert De Niro. “I don’t even know if he knows the rules,” he says.

A very unexpected piece of information comes to light when he puts his phone on the table. His phone case is a montage of images of Shrek. He explains that his youngest daughter Olivia put it on a few years ago and he kept it there to please her.

But even though he carries Shrek around with him, he especially doesn't want to provide voices for animated films: “I can't do that. I tried.”

I told him he's really saying one of the great method actors can't do comic voices? Not even, say, a panda?

“Okay, I think I can,” he relents, before chuckling and adding, “I really don’t want to.”

Aside from never being a godfather, there's another glaring omission in Pacino's list of accolades: the Hollywood Walk of Fame.

As soon as the subject is brought up, he interrupts: “Oh, I don’t have a star.”

He's known this for some time, and he turns around and asks his assistant Mike, “Is there a mechanism to all this? Being a star?”

“Were you a busy man?” Mike calls back by way of explanation.

And does he want one?

“Oh yeah. Sure.”

At 84, Pacino is still a man with Hollywood dreams.

Al Pacino's Sonny Boy is out now.

A one-hour version of this interview will air on BBC 2 on October 25 at 9pm BST