I found that speaking live to people, young people, about what I liked and what had been happening to me was very good for me. I was quite overtaken by success and fame. I was one of those types who responded to it in a negative way. It was not easy.
[Oscar Wilde's Salome screenplay] is not autobiographical in a sense where you go to my house and see my kids and stuff like that, but that's why I guess it's semi-autobiographical.
I'm an actor, and everything about me - the way I perceive things, the way I have seen the world - has been in relation to characters and how I would want to play something or not play it.
When I was younger, there was the sex thing. That's par for the course.When you're a movie star, it went with it. It's a kind of rite of passage, socially.
I like, for instance, 'Serpico.' I enjoyed playing Serpico because Frank Serpico was there. He existed. He was a real life person and I could - I could embody him. I could, you know, I could work and get to know him and have him help me with the text, the script and become him. It's almost like a painter having a model to become.
My grandfather was a provider. Work, any kind of work, was the joy of his life. So I grew up having a certain relationship to work. It was something that I always wanted.
You sharpen the human appetite to the point where it can split atoms with its desire; you build egos the size of cathedrals; fiber-optically connect the world to every eager impulse; grease even the dullest dreams with these dollar-green, gold-plated fantasies, until every human becomes an aspiring emperor, becomes his own God... and where can you go from there?
Whether he's doing great acting or not, you're seeing somebody who is in the tradition of a great actor. What he does with it, that's something else, but he's got it all. The talent, the instrument is there, that's why he has endured.
I can see [ talent or curiosity for acting] in my oldest daughter [Julia Marie Pacino]. I don't know how long she'll run away from it, but it's there in her.
I understand the directors much more. I was always rebelling against them when I was a youngster, I didn't want to be told what to do. I had no identification.