his childhood and a little joke to his mom till she understood...

Alfredo James Pacino--called "Sonny" by his friends and family was born on April 25, 1940 to parents Salvatore and Rose Pacino, in East Harlem, New York City. His parents divorced when Al was two years old, and he and his mother went to live with her parents, the Gerards, in the South Bronx. Al's relationship with his father was never a good one, and they rarely saw each other or spoke when he was a child; instead, his male role model was to become his grandfather James (who emigrated to the US from none other than Corleone, Sicily, if you can believe it), with whom Al Pacino became irrevocably close to. Pacino was raised in a comfortable, sheltered environment; they didn't have much money, but they were still happy nonetheless.

When Al was a little boy and his mother came home from work, she would bring her son to the movies (usually every Saturday). Al soon became fascinated by them. He would spend hours reciting and acting out his favorite scenes, imitating his favorite actors. He particularly enjoyed mimicking dramatic deaths, and his favorite was to reinact the entire scene from The Lost Weekend where a drunken Ray Milland is having trouble finding his booze bottle. Al would perform it at most family gatherings and parties, and when his relatives struggled to keep in their uproarous giggles, the little boy would frown at them. "Why are you laughing!? The guy can't find the bottle! It's serious!"

"I remember, I would come home--this is interesting to think of it now--I'd come home [from the movies], I'd always make an entrance at night... And [when I made my entrance], usually it was a 'dying' entrance. I'd come in and 'die' all the way to the kitchen."

Al Pacino struggled as a child amongst his peers. He had many friends, but he was constantly being teased because of his height, obsession with acting, and countless other pointless things that made him different from other kids. He was also rather susceptible to injuries. While playing a game of cops and robbers with a pal, little Pacino ran straight into a barbed wire fence and caught his lip on some of the wire. Al had reinacted pain and horror so many times that his friend at first thought he was pulling his leg, but soon Al's screams finally triggered the kid to run for help. The moment Mrs. Pacino saw her son Al Pacino dangling by the lip, she fainted on the spot.

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