north carolina set to be the next — with three days to go until the election. more than 70 million people have already cast their vote — beating the early voter turnout record set in 2020. al pacino: once upon a time in hollywood. he's an icon, an oscar winner, and without doubt, one of the greatest screen actors of all time. al pacino. his place in movie history was assured from the moment hejoined one of cinema's most famous and feared families. you're my older brother and i love you, but don't ever take sides with anyone against the family again. since that introduction,

he's had us transfixed with an extraordinary run of films including dog day afternoon, serpico, carlito�*s way, heat, the insider, and the irishman. chewing performances and then spitting you out at the end credits. i don't know how to do anything else. neitherdo i. i don't much want to either. neitherdo i. now, for the first time, al pacino has written down his own story from growing up in new york to the present day here in los angeles, where he's lived for a quarter of a century to be near his children. and last year, he became a dad again. and that is just one of the many subjects which feature in his new autobiography, sonny boy, and that he recently discussed with me once upon a time in hollywood.

i was performing since i was just a little boy. my mother used to take me to the movies when i was as young as 3 or 4 years old. she didn't know that she was supplying me with a future i was immediately attached to. watching actors on the screen. since i never had playmates in our apartment and we didn't have television set yet, i would have nothing but time to think about the movie i had seen the night before. i'd go through the characters in my head, and i would bring them to life in a way, one by one in the apartment i lived in. i learned at an early age to make friends with my imagination.

al pacino. yes. autobiographies. drew barrymore was 15 when she wrote her first one. miley cyrus, 16. the british footballer wayne rooney, he waited till he was 20. you? 84. why the wait? enough has happened to me that it could possibly be interesting for someone to read. i thought it was fun. once i started it, i enjoyed thinking about things that had happened to me and my childhood and stuff, and that sort of was spurring me on. they called me sunny and paci. their nickname for pacino. they also call me pistachio.

i like pistachio ice cream, so they call me that. the autobiography deals a lot with family and fatherhood, obviously. and you became a father again last year. how have you reacted to that? well its extraordinary. i've reacted to it as many ways as you could possibly react to it. it was... it's wonderful. you know, i have this little person who's talking to me, but he's not. he's still, you know, too young. everything he does is real. everything he does is interesting to me, you know? so we talk. i play the harmonica with him, and we have made this kind of contact, so it's fun. it's fun to have like four kids now, and you realise how much fun it is to have children. there is a certain fascination with you being a dad at 83. did you have any reservations about the age? i'd want to be around for this child. of course i did. and i hope i am. i hope i stay healthy, and he knows who his dad is.

of course. something that hasn't always stayed healthy is pacino's bank balance. take a hollywood lifestyle, combined with some wild spending, and a crooked accountant who ended up behind bars, and you're left with nothing. when you thought you'd got $50 million tucked away. 2011, you basically go, i'm running out of money. "i'm running out of money." i was out of money. i was gone and my accountant was in prison. because of it. and other people, too. you go into the amount of money you were spending every month. oh my god. $400,000. i didn't know about it. and didn't know about it. yeah. how does that happen? i don't know. you got to be dumb enough. first of all, i just didn't get it. you know, istill don't. i don't understand that kind of thing. and i don't know why. i heard francis coppola recently talking

about — he doesn't care. he says "what's money is not first." itjust never was with me. although, i mean, i like it. we need it. we have to have it, you know? and i'm all for it. but at the same time, ijust don't understand it. and so you say in the book that it did affect your choice of films, and you were doing projects for the money. that's right. how is that experience? well, when you got it, you got it. and, you know, sometimes you just my experience is to work the experience is to work... the fact that i'm lucky enough to be in a position that i'm in that i can work and get paid for it like that. and it was in my 70s. you're not getting the same paydays any more. things change. but that was all right. i found ways of dealing with it. wow. al pacino. it's not al any more.

it's dunk. what's my name? dunkaccino. # dunk a dunk, dunk, dunk a dunkaccino.# and boom! there you have it. it's actually 32 seconds, so i got to lose two seconds. maybe you can tell me what part you would lose. but i think we are getting there. burn this. i made, uh, i made some adjustments and but i still every role i play, i'm playing it. it's serious to me. i'm going to try to present something with my successes, my failures. it's like, you know, you just keep going. you just keep going. that's it. hey. remember me? over the years, al pacino has died on screen more times than most. usually dispatched with a bullet. but in 2020, an encounter with covid resulted in a real life near—death experience. you seem to still be trying to work out whether you did die or not. i don't think i died. i thought i did. it felt like i did because there was something. then there was nothing.

no fall, no anything. there was just nothing. which was, in retrospect, was sort of frightening. everybody sort of flipped out. i was out and i opened my eyes. there were five paramedics in my living room. there were two doctors who looked like spacemen, and there was an ambulance in front of my house. and people think, i don't believe in an afterlife because i said that he saw nothing when i said "maybe there's no afterlife for me." you know, maybe if someone else is going somewhere because they did what i didn't do. there's no sequel. no sequel? no. exactly. i think it's crazy. it's too much to even comprehend how why you can actually go through this life. and then it's over and you don't even know about it. you don't even... all the things i remember, they died. it's all over?

it's very hard to conceive of that. there have been great people who have thought it through and talked about it, but it's something i don't think i have any idea what to expect. i'll take care of you now. i'm with you now. i'm with you. let's talk about the godfather. yes. finally. something that i understand. when i say that, how does it make you feel? do you still feel like proud of it? do you feel excited to talk about it? you know, i was in it. how did that happen? i was lucky because francis coppola saw me on stage on broadway once. once you were in the role of the godfather. yeah. they wanted rid of you. how close did you come to being sacked from the godfather? well, i guess when your director talks to you

and says, you know, i had a lot of faith in you, man. what's happening? "you're not delivering." i didn't know what i was doing right or wrong. but francis told me. "i want you to take a look at the rushes", the footage that we had shot. "because you're not making it. "you're not cutting it." i kind of knew i wasn't, but i was prepared for that because that was the way i wanted to go with the character i wanted to start from. you know, someone who was a in, you know, he wasn't someone you recognised right away or your i went to, he was in the background and that was my plan to go through the entire text and have this arc and finally reach to the part where you say, what? "where did this guy come from?" this is an enigma, you know? that's what i was going for. iwas going... i didn't know how to

articulate what i was doing. say to francis, "well, this is the way i'm starting, "but i have plans to take this character "into different levels "until he's, you know, "where he winds up." but they were losing patience. oh, yeah. they wanted something else. according to film folklore and with those movie executives circling, francis ford coppola made sure pacino became the leading man. they couldn't refuse. they say that francis moved that scene up. he claims he didn't, but i... it seems like that would be the thing to do. get to the meat, because that's what the studio wants to see. so it saved me. i got in that scene and i and i did it not knowing what was going on. i always felt i wasn't wanted and that kind of feeling. but they liked the scene and that was it. who were they going to replace you with, do you think?

could you see anyone lurking around? bob de niro comes to mind. laughter could have been in an earlier godfather. yeah, that... he was great in that godfather, too. yeah, but you honestly. you think they could have replaced you with him for the first one? yeah, sure. why not? well, you know, i'm not irreplaceable. not yet. to me, godfather is a great film because of francis ford coppola and what he how he put that together. in the 70s, you and robert de niro were both having these explosions at the same time. you know, he's doing mean streets. dustin hoffman was in there. they used to put the three of us together a lot. we were always... we were new york actors. brother, you are going down. despite them both starring in the godfather part

two, heat, made 20 years later, was the first time pacino and de niro had appeared together on screen. one reason for that long wait mightjust be hollywood's seemingly random casting processes, which can leave even the biggest stars pondering over a long list of movie might have beens dating back to the 1970s. it's a heck of a time for cinema. new hollywood, and george lucas wanted you to be han solo in starwars. why didn't you go for that one? i read the script, and i don't understand it. i mean, how am i going to play it? i don't know. i don't understand these things. any regrets? no, not... not on that. plenty of regrets, but not on that. no. 0ne role you did get — tony montana. scarface? yes. even as i say that, you start smiling. yes.

what is it about that film? i don't know, man. it's... it's got something. ok, i'm not out in 15 minutes, something's wrong. 0k. and, you know, we had so much trouble on this when it first came out. this is really a happy story. you make a film like scarface. it took us almost a year making it, actually shooting it with the great brian de palma and the great oliver stone writing it, and marty bregman the great, producing it. it's his vision. and theyjust got blasted by the press and everything. there was people coming, you know, we had an audience, but it didn't last. its reputation just built and built and built, especially with love from the hip hop community as well. it was the hip hop community. it was the rappers that embraced it and were able to see the story in there. is the part of you that wishes your best actor 0scar was for that film.

you know, that's interesting. i didn't get nominated for that film, but i was doing a play in san francisco, and when i came out in the afternoon and the nominations had come out and i wasn't nominated, the crowd that was out there waiting for me when i did this 0scar like this for me made 0scar. for me when i did this 0scar like this for me — a made 0scar. it was much bigger than the original, and they presented it to me and i thought that was. i still have it. you know, it's. .. that was a great gift. i mean, it really it really touched me. and it wasn't until scent of a woman ten years later and his eighth nomination, the pacino finally shook off that 0scars jinx and won the big one — best actorfor his performance as retired army general frank slade.

if you've been around a lot sooner or later and you've been nominated and nominated, they get they're sort of looking for a way to give you an oscar. you know, it's funny and, uh, not that i turned my back on scent of a woman. i understand, but that's where i, where i, i received it. that was after eight nominations. you have played a lot of alpha male characters over the years. how do you think masculinity has changed during your career? standouts usually have me with a gun. they say, "give pacino a gun, you got a hit." how does that make you feel? that quote? well, if i tell you the truth, if it's true, fine. it's ok. they said that about james cagney, edward g robinson, humphrey bogart.

these were big stars, but, you know edward g. robinson was nothing like his films, and he was a great actor, and so was cagney. orson welles says cagney is the greatest actor that he ever saw. and so it's it's very tricky. and you have to understand that you get parts that are suited. and if you score in those roles, there's more to come — when you take the characters i played, you take godfather, you take donnie brasco. different. not the same people. you take scarface. certainly different than those two. carlito's way — different. so i don't see a similarity, even. they belong in a certain spectrum, but they're different. i don't see repeating in those characters. i try to avoid that.

you've played a lot of real characters as well. everyone from hoffa to phil spectre. to phil spectre. now, your book's out there. if someone bought the rights to that. how would you feel about your life story being turned into a film with someone playing you? i would be sort of embarrassed, but it's ok, you know? i mean, why would you be embarrassed? i don't know why. i mean, because it's not me. but that's ok, you know? i mean, i did serpico, right? super big picture. but i mean, when it was on the stands to buy the book and there was my picture on the cover, serpico, and i said, but it's a book, and it's i'm not serpico, but it was a famous actor that. so, you know, how do you think he felt? it would be a heck of a thing for someone to play al pacino. really? yeah. well, there's me, and then

there's the roles i played. who do you view nowadays as being like, say, three actors who could be the equivalent of that? something good to think about. i have to i would have to think about it. you know, there are actors. i really liked it and wonderful actors today. and, well, of course, there's leo dicaprio. dicaprio. adam driver. all right. yeah. and, uh, some of the others. these are well known. yeah. you can say their names if people know who you're talking about. mauricio? yes. how are you? i'm good. you had a good day today, huh? it was good. i mean, i showed you everything i could show you in one sitting. yes. thank you, uncle. it's beautiful here. i say this because patricia has told me that you may be interested in learning about our business. i can see others coming along. they're coming along. and i'm very thrilled by some of the performances i've been seeing.

there's quantity, you know. and you've got those streamers. a lot of actors are working today. they're doing things. there's parts, there's projects. and that's a positive thing. how worried are you about the future of cinema when there's the stats that ticket sales have gone down 40% in a decade? i've seen so many things come and go that i don't know if you're an actor. they recently had a strike. we got ai coming to which who knows, but things evolve. we are a species that evolves. look at us now. i mean, things happen. people want to be entertained. the times too, what's going on. everything. i'm always... i have, for instance, i, i got a couple of

things i'm doing now. i try to keep the, the roles to a minimum in terms of not large parts, which i enjoy doing because i have to go through all the things i go through when i do a large role. you have to become a character and stuff. but i do have another large role coming up, which is a frank lloyd wright, which is an incredible project to play this person and the script is good. so i've been dealing with it and i'll take it on. and what will happen? you are someone who grew up going to the cinema, and it's clearjust how much that experience meant to you. ten, 15 years... are there still going to be cinemas to go to? i hope so, i think that's what it's about. that's what scorsese is doing. that's what tarantino is doing. the people who have... francis coppola is doing it because they've gotten... they understand it. they have control of it.

they own it. in other words, they that's how they communicate their art form through film. are you worried, though. about cinema when it means so much to, you. the idea of a la without cinemas? i don't think that's going to happen. it can't happen. it was back in 2004 that pacino won, not an oscar, but an emmy award for playing the notorious lawyer roy cohen in the drama series angels in america by taking on the role, he became one of the biggest hollywood names to embrace television today. today commonplace, back then, unusualfor an actor of his stature. but change and what the future may hold is something he has always been relaxed about. with actors, there's so much talk about digital representation and how once, once you've gone, that can live on.

how do you feel about your image starring in films in the future? i can't think about things like that. i mean, what would i know? who knows, maybe they'd get some image that works. when you're in this position of being famous, sometimes there's a third rail there that you've got to avoid. so i found a way to do it, which is to take it with a grain of salt. are you thinking about legacy as well? is that part of it? i haven't thought about legacy ever, and i don't know why. because i keep thinking there's something fatal about that. ijust don't want to go near a legacy. a legacy is... because things changing all the time. you know, you work for a time. we feel about things the way we do. and then ten years later, it's gone. and people are interested in other things. i don't even think about that. i don't even think about being old, actually. but i feel it. i don't think about it, but i feel it. do you? when i wake up in the morning and i sit at the bed, especially when i'm

working, because i've been working a lot these days. bongiorno. turn on channel seven, abc, fbi. i'm watching you, nebraska jim, as we speak. i think once upon a time in hollywood is a great film, and the mere fact that i was in it gave me some sort of cachet. i don't know, and then next comes the irishman, bob de niro and martin scorsese came to me years before talking about what they were going to do, and i was all for it. and then finally, it's a script. i go out and i do that. i have a huge part. i get a nomination for an oscar, putting me up against brad pitt, joe pesci, anthony hopkins and tom hanks. i had no problem that night accepting my losing status among those guys. next thing you know, i'm in the house of gucci, which is a hot film. great people like adam driver, lady gaga, jared leto,

and my dearfriend jeremy irons is in it. it didn't get the reception that others got, but it made good at the box office. plus, it was directed by one of the all time greats, ridley scott, who i really took to. someone so gifted and so much fun to work with. we were in hollywood last night. we went looking for your star on the walk of fame. couldn't find it. you were disappointed. appointed. i well, i haven't looked lately, but i don't remember them ever putting a star. there are a lot of people who have, but there's also a lot of people who don't have a star. if if hollywood's committee are watching this interview, would you be up for one now? of course. there we go. yeah, sure. come on. al pacino wants his star on the hollywood walk of fame. in the book, chess comes up a lot. i used to play a lot of chess. who's the most famous person you've ever beaten at chess?

i think it was... i think i might have beaten dennis quaid is too good. jamie foxx is too good. oh, really? i always try, and on any given sunday we all used to play. butjim brown was the best. jim brown's a great nfl player. yeah. football player who passed away. i really liked and he really beat me all the time. but what he had trouble with when he played chess with me and he said, "i don't know what you're going to do "because you got that, you know, eclectic "style of thinking. you know, you don't think. "you know, you don't think. "you don't do what's expected." that was a huge compliment. i thought, really? i said, "that's coming off." it's always interesting when you meet someone like you thinking,

right, what am i going to learn about al pacino from meeting him? yeah. your phone cover. can you show this, please, and explain the story? because of all the things in the world that i thought al pacino would have on his phone cover, i was not expecting shrek. who would be expecting shrek? who? that's mine. can you explain why you shrek it? my youngest daughter was little younger a few years ago, and she decided, you know, she said, oh, she was big on phone cases for a while there. so she said, "can i have your phone, dad?" i wasjust kidding. so i gave her my phone and she came back and she had this on it. so ijust laughed, you know, and she said, it's shrek, dad. i said, shrek. wow. i know shrek somehow. and then i said, yes, the film. shrek. yes. ok, i'll hold on to it. you know, you were saying you needed roles for the money, you should have done kids cartoon voices. that's an easy one. i can't do it. i've tried.

i mean, someone says to me, you got to be mad. now put on a voice. i don't know how. and when you see the great ones like robin williams, the way he did this, it was like a work of art. aladdin. oh my god. ifreaked out, i thought, this is great performance, this aladdin guy. he was amazing in it. but at the same time, ijust, uh. i have no feeling for it — to do this, what we do, all of this thing that we've chosen to do with our lives. you have to have an appetite or a desire to do this. otherwise, it doesn't make sense. al pacino it's clear — you still have your appetite. that's great to hear. it's been a real pleasure. my pleasure. it was a great talking to you. you have good questions. and this you can't get over. i know. someday, one day i'll take it off. but i don't know how.

live from london, this is bbc news. the spanish prime minister says 10,000 extra soldiers and police are to join the recovery operations in valencia — after the worst flood in generations. translation: we're talking - about the biggest deployment of emergency services and the army that we have ever deployed in peace times in our country. here in the uk — kemi badenoch wins the race to become the new leader of the conservative party — the first black woman to lead a major political party in britain. to be heard, we have to be honest, honest about the fact that we made mistakes.

honest about the fact that we let standards slip. and — in the final weekend before tuesday's vote — the us presidential candidates rally through battleground states where this election will be won or lost. we are live in wisconsin as early voting is continuing, people getting votes cast a couple of days before election day. hello, i'm rajini vaidyanathan. spain's government has significantly stepped up the response to the country's worst flooding crisis in generations. the country's prime minister, pedro sanchez, is sending 10,000 extra soldiers and police tojoin the rescue and recovery operation in valencia, the region worst affected by this week's flash flooding and landslides.