Oscar-winner Al Pacino has revealed he was “scared” to attend the Academy Awards on some occasions when he was nominated. The US actor, 84, won an Oscar for playing a blind veteran in Scent Of A Woman, and has had another eight nominations for his acting. Pacino told BBC Radio 2’s Dermot O’Leary show: “Jack Kerouac, the great writer, beat generation writer who lived in the city, couldn’t cope with it, and somebody said of him that he was embarrassed by success.
“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 (Marlon) 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.” Brando won a best actor Oscar for his role as Vito Corleone in The Godfather in 1972, the same year that Pacino received his first nomination for supporting actor in the same movie. Pacino added that he experienced “feeling out of place” a few times, “because I was very famous and didn’t even know it”.
He added: “I started experiencing it before I was even nominated for an Oscar. Al Pacino with his Emmy award for best lead actor for his role in Angels In Ameri.