He played in The Godfather and that was his most popular role in the whole movie,film and cinema history.

The executives at Paramount turned him down. Al was obviously hugely disappointed, but he told Coppola that perhaps he just wasn't meant for the role, thanked him for giving him the chance, and went on his way. Coppola wasn't finished, though. He would take Al and sneak him in for a screentest every chance he got; in the end, executives were in possession of (reportedly) nearly 100 tests with this actor nobody had ever heard of.Al Pacino was starting to get restless. "At the time, I told [Coppola], 'I don't respond well to being in situations where I'm not wanted,'" he recalled nearly thirty years later. It got to the point where he was being taunted and teased by the bigshots to his face, and Al had practically had enough. Coppola still reassured him that everything would be all right in the end, and at last, the executives gave the hesitant thumbs-up.

But things weren't over then. Al was in constant fear of being fired on the set, since when Coppola wound send executives finished takes, they said that Al's performance was too dull, too boring. But that all changed when Coppola coaxed them to watch a scene from the 1971 little-seen film The Panic in Needle Park (1971), Al's first starring role in which he gives a gritty and unbelievable performance as a young heroin addict named Bobby. That 8-minute clip was all it took. They were left stunned. And it was set.Al Pacino, whom to Hollywood was just a thirtysomething nobody from the South Bronx, was to play Michael Corleone.

Needless to say, the film was a smash. Pacino's performance had critics practically kissing the ground beneath his feet, and he earned an Academy Award nomination. Suddenly Al was thrust into a world which he was completely unfamiliar with: fame, fortune, glamour, pizzaz...he was finally one of those guys he had so admired as a little boy at the local cineplex.

"It's a relative thing, fame. And it works on different people differently... And how it worked on me was...I...I started to--I didn't talk the way I usually talk. And I realized people were receptive to me. And I hadn't earned it. I had done nothing to earn their laughs, or their interest or anything. And it felt kinda cool to just sit there and not have to earn it. And I think that's a trap you can fall into with fame. Because life is people, being with people, interchanging with people, that's what life is. When you're famous, sometimes, that part of you can get cut off. And I'll tell you how. Because, you don't employ the stuff that makes you what you are, because you don't have to. And so, I fell victim to that a little bit. But I am aware of it."

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