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Alison: This is All of it. I'm Alison Stewart. Today, Al Pacino is one of the most famous actors in Hollywood, also a recent dad who's played in some of the most iconic roles in movie history. Don't forget, Pacino's humble beginnings as an actor started right here in New York. He was born in Manhattan and raised in The Bronx and started auditioning for theater roles when he was just a teenager. As proof of his New Yorker roots, when he joined us last fall, he asked me where I was speaking to him from, and I told him the WNYC studios. We're on Varick Street near Houston. This is what he had to say.

Al Pacino: Varick and Houston. I know now where I am. I miss it. That's so cool. Varick and Houston is great. I was doing theater down there early when I started. Varick and Houston, it was like the reviewer said, if you can find the place, SoHo becomes so popular and unique. It was a place you would think was bombed, leveled.

Alison: Pacino is joining us to talk about the 75th anniversary of The Actors Studio. He's the co-president of the organization. The Actors Studio is a theater group that serves as a sort of lab for actors, writers, and directors. Its alumni include Marilyn Monroe, Marlon Brando, Paul Newman, Jane Fonda, Sally Field, and many, many more. The Actors Studio was the place where Pacino practiced method acting, learning from one of its strongest proponents, Lee Strasberg. Ahead of the anniversary last year, Al Pacino and I talked about his relationship with The Actors Studio, his philosophy on acting, and his performance in the 1975 film, Dog Day Afternoon. I started by asking Al Pacino about his first audition for The Actors Studio.

Al Pacino: The great thing about that was that I auditioned as a teenager and they wrote back, "Nice try, young fellow," something like that, that they would actually go out of their way to do that for people who would come and encourage them. Years later, five or six years, seven years later, I auditioned again. I was lucky because that night, another friend of mine had an audition, so they got to see me in two scenes that were opposite. I had an advantage because the characters I played in each of the scenes were not the same kind of thing. Are you getting what I'm expressing?

Alison: 100%. You got to flex a little bit there, Al.

Al Pacino: Yes, I had a little flex there, so it helped. "Hey. Oh, he's that guy too. Okay." They probably took note, and they took a lot of people in that time I passed, my final. You get a preliminary audition and then maybe you have two preliminary auditions. This is the way it used to be. Then the final audition comes if you pass the two preliminary auditions. Then Lee Strasberg, Kazan, and all those people back there would view you, look at you. Let me tell you, not many times in my life I've been that terrified to go up there and face that kind of judgment.

Alison: What did it mean to you? Why did you want to be a part of The Actors Studio at that time? What did it represent to young Al Pacino?

Al Pacino: It was like getting a great role or something or being able to finally graduate to something. Also, the reputation it had, because in the '60s, it was still part of that group that came in that came from the Yiddish theater or the group theater, which was a force in our city. The Kazan at that time; Harold Clurman, Lee Strasberg, Cheryl Crawford, they were on a high level and considered the mavericks of the theater at that time. It had this vitality, freshness, and originality.

To come up with a place to go for actors, the consideration of that, that there was a need for that, it wasn't just getting out and about looking for a job. It was a place you could also go to and express and try things out. You could do scenes from great plays or exercises that they had in a place that we were looked at, you were talked to by some of the great people of the day.

When I went, finally got in, my era was I came way after the James Dean and Marlon Brandos and Marilyn Monroes, Paul Newmans that were there at The Actors Studio. They became a part of it. They too were a little bit later than the originals, which were Luther Adler, Stella Adler, but they came after them. It just became a notorious place. They've likened it to RADA in London. When you went to RADA, you were considered an actor. At that point to me, one never thought you were going to get in, in fact. You were never really accepted until you auditioned. The beauty of that too was that anyone could audition. It was unheard of because it had a lot of liberal ideas. That was one of them.

The other is, once you became a member, you never had to pay anything before or after. It was free auditions. Then if you got accepted, it was free forever, for life. You see, there was so much activity. Unlike the school, it never called itself an acting school. It didn't teach acting because most of the actors at The Actors Studio were professional actors already established or whatever. Sometimes you got new ones in there like me or not, hadn't worked a lot. I was sort of young at that time. I was sort of youngish for acceptance, so I was very lucky. I remember getting accepted into The Actors Studio and I remember going home on the subway to my apartment where I was a superintendent at the time.

Alison: Were you really?

Al Pacino: Yes, I was. It was a little stopover in my job circuit. I remember looking at myself in the reflection on the subway train. You can see yourself when you stand there looking. I thought, "You're an actor." There was a sense of it that I never had before. That was important to me in that thing, but of course, I was shy and it took me a long time to do a scene there. For instance, you could go and you don't have to work. You could just sit there and listen, watch other people go to different-- also, it was a meeting place. That's where you made friends. You were involved in the interfacing with people who do what you do or something close to it like directing, writing, or acting.

Alison: I watched Dog Day Afternoon again this past weekend. A, it holds up [laughs]. It really does.

Al Pacino: I'm glad to hear that.

Alison: You were so interested in because now I can watch it and I can read directors' notes and directors' cuts. One of the things I found interesting was that it was shot fairly quickly, like in seven weeks, I read in the production notes, in Brooklyn. What was it like to shoot Dog Day Afternoon so quickly?

Al Pacino: Here's the thing that people don't know. Sidney Lumet who was very close to the theater rehearses. We had three weeks of rehearsal. That is unheard of now. You don't get that in films. That's a big part of it. He knows what he wants. He follows his own map of direct-- like he once said, "Look, directing means you direct. You don't really spend your time talking to the actors about what they're going to do because you've cast them." You believe you've cast the appropriate actors to the roles, and you let them do their thing, but the way you do that is you rehearse.

Rehearsal, it's a landmark of Actors Studio. You don't just go up there and do it. You can. Sometimes you can be very lucky and do films without any rehearsal, and your own private work. I think what movies have taught me is to do a lot of work in private. I found that as I went on in the movies and films, I did a lot of things on my own, which I always recommend to actors, and they know that. Most actors do things on their own like they do in theater. When we went on that set, we already had gone through this story seven or eight times, so that by the time we got on a film, he could go fast because there was not much rehearsal while we were shooting.

Alison: I have to say something. Hearing you talk, you love acting. I can hear how much you love the craft, and how appreciative you are of the craft and the history of it.

Al Pacino: Yes, but the craft has a lot of contradictions, so do I in terms of it. I could say ideally, when I look at that, and I remember as a young actor, when I looked at him come in, I thought, "That's a great thing I'm seeing, but I know it's going to take me a lifetime to be able to do it because it's got something to do with something else." It is like you say a craft, but the surprises come in acting too. Things come, I can't think of him right now, stories and things one does that--

I do adhere to my thoughts about repetition. I found that there's something that happens to the unconscious, that's where I'm at. My thing has always been the unconscious. Work is there not to be remembered, to be forgotten the same way a ballet dancer. I was just on the phone a couple of days ago with Michael Keaton talking about this. The ballet dancer practices strenuously. I don't know if you've ever seen any of those sessions in order to do what they do.

Alison: Sure.

Al Pacino: When they go on the stage and perform the play they're in, the ballet they're in, they are not thinking of the exercises. They know they got to go here and there, and what enables them to do it is the practice they had. You know the old saying, "You want to go to Carnegie Hall? How do you get to Carnegie Hall? Practice."

Alison: Practice.

Al Pacino: I'm a believer that in films today, we don't have that as much, ensemble. It was great to have ensemble, the director and all the artists in there, we all get together and spend weeks and weeks and weeks talking about the play and trying it. With the Brick Theater, we'd come to New York, and they'd perform sometimes. People were stunned. They'd say, "How come we don't do that?" Also, the Stanislavski thing from Russia would come and do something like the Three Sisters or whatever, and people would be in awe. They didn't realize that they worked on that, performed it, and worked for years.

Alison: For years. Al, is there anything you would want people to understand about The Actors Studio, to know about The Actors Studio as we are celebrating its 75th anniversary?

Al Pacino: I think they were going to start having these where people can come and watch. We used to have special evenings at The Actors Studio where some of the work there is put together so we can do benefits. They had benefits like five times a year at the studio itself, so people who sponsored it and gave for it would get a sense of the work progressing and seeing stuff that we do there. Almost like a theater, we'd have weekends where we would perform. I did that too. I performed a couple of things there. I did Oedipus there. That's how I got to do Richard III. I did Shakespeare, I did all that stuff there because it was-- when you're a young actor, you go up there, you want to do Hamlet, but you're not going to get the part. What you do is you practice Hamlet, and then what happens is it encourages.

It encouraged my love of Shakespeare by practicing it, by performing it. This is another seed that you can go on a limb there. I even did a musical there. I actually sang in a musical. It does these things that normally the actors wouldn't have the opportunity to do. What it does is it deepens the performances. It deepens your craft and your skills. It just deepens them.

It does produce, as to give you some examples, some of the great connected to The Actors Studio one way or the other. I know Dustin Hoffman got in when I got in. I know Bob De Niro is there, Jon Voight. All these people that have participated in it have in one way or the other been connected to it because there's a focus on it. It isn't an acting school, it's an acting community. That's what it really is. It also employs the directors and the writers. It has all this. It's a gift, really, and I think that's one of the reasons it's lasted this long.

Alison: That was actor Al Pacino speaking to us last fall around the 75th anniversary of The Actors Studio. Pacino is the studio's co-president. Next, another iconic New Yorker, Barry Manilow, was honored this year by the New York Pops at Carnegie Hall. We'll speak to Barry about his career and of course, listen to some music. This is All Of It.

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