Al Pacino almost quit The Godfather.
While it’s widely known that the producers of one of the best films of the 1970s wanted someone else to play Michael Corleone, Pacino himself now says that he almost walked away from the iconic role.
The 74-year-old says that he only stayed on board due to the support of the film’s director Francis Ford Coppola.
“They wanted to fire me when I was on the picture…(during) the shooting, first couple of weeks,” he told ABC News.
“Because they kept seeing the rushes, you know, or the footage that was shot, and they kept looking at it and thinking, ‘What is he doing?'”
On Coppola’s role in getting him to see it through and ultimately enter film history, Pacino added: “I was so confused at that time, and Francis was so supportive, you know, and so helping me in it, all of it.
“If it wasn’t for Francis, I would’ve just not showed up one day and said, ‘Hey, look man, I don’t want to be where I’m not wanted.’
“It was – yes, a form of innocence or detachment in a crazy way. It was a kind of detachment. And then so that when the character finally emerges…you say where did that come from? That was what I was really going after.”
