We had three weeks of rehearsal on Dog Day Afternoon, and everything was going very well until about 10 days before we were to start shooting, when Al Pacino wanted to quit the picture. They summoned me to New York, and I arrived to find Sidney Lumet and Al in the depth of gloom about the whole thing. Al said it had become apparent in the course of the rehearsals that the homosexuality of the relationship was the dominant thing, and he’d decided he didn’t want to do that, for a lot of reasons, personal and professional – that he didn’t want to do a scene in which he appeared with [Chris Sarandon's] character. I had written the key, climactic scene between the two of them, these two people who were lovers-in fact, they were married in church by a homosexual priest-and in the movie, they come to a point where they have to say goodbye to each other forever. And this scene, which cries out to be played in some sort of privacy, I had them play out in the street in front of hundreds of armed cops and 2,000 people who were all screaming ‘faggot’ at them. So they have to say goodbye to each other in this absolute madness, and it ended with a kiss on the lips. Well Al said he would not do that scene, and I don’t blame him at all. The full dimensions were not apparent, as to how this would appear on screen, until they got into rehearsing it. So what it got down to was, Al said, ‘I want to take out all the references, to sex – all that has to go. Furthermore, I won’t appear in a scene where I have to be face-to-face with him.’ So I said, ‘The only way you’ll play a scene together is on the telephone?’ And he said, ‘That’s right.’ So I said, ‘I don’t see anything else to do now but send the screenplay to Dustin Hoffman.’ And Al said, ‘Before you do that, I wish you’d just think of one thing: You’ve had marriages, and you’ve had love affairs in which there have been climactic scenes, the end of love, the saying goodbye. And in how many of those real, life situations has sex ever come into it, in terms of what you said to each other? Why can’t you write a relationship about two people who love each other and can’t find a way to live with each other?’ And I saw instantly that he was absolutely, totally right! And I said, ‘You sonovabitch-why didn’t you think of this four months ago, when there was some time to write this?’ But you know, it actually turned out to be rather easy. It took about 48 hours to do the rewrite. The first thing I did was cut out all the scenes I had written for them and reduced it, essentially, to the scene that plays on the telephone. For each one of them, I wrote a monologue that ran about four pages … about how they met, why they loved each other, why they can’t live together, what’s wrong with the other person, and all the lousy things they’d done to each other. I gave the copies to Pacino and Sarandon, and then I turned on a tape recorder. And they started by reading from their monologues, and then improvising a bit off it, and I just ran the tape recorder for about a half-hour. Then I took that material back and rewrote it into a scene. I gave it a dramatic structure, which was the hidden motive that the Sarandon character has in making the telephone call – to induce the Pacino character to say that he had nothing to do with the planning of the crime, so he’s not an accessory and won’t have to go to jail. If you look at it, in about eight minutes, they act out the exact arc of their real-life relationship. It goes from bad to worse, with a great deal of tenderness and no sexuality at all. And I realized something else that resulted from making that alteration, and that is, it changed the whole nature of the movie. While it was funnier the other way, to many people, in the end, it would have come out as being homophobic. It was an enormous improvement. It was one of those insights that an actor brings for which you’re just ever-grateful.

Al Pacino‘s greatest moment as an actor came when he got to do his first scene opposite Marlon Brando in The Godfather – because Brando is God. Pacino, who idolises Brando, says the experience of acting with him was one he’ll never forget. He says, “Have you any idea what it was like to be doing a scene with him? I sat in the theatres when I was a kid just watching him. Now I’m playing a scene with him. He’s God man.” He adds, “There’s no doubt every time I see Brando that I’m looking at a great actor. Whether he’s doing great acting or not, you’re seeing somebody who is in the tradition of the great actor. “What he does with it, that’s something else, but he’s got it all, the talent, the instrument is there, that’s why he endured.” And Pacino, who was a virtual unknown when Francis Ford Coppola cast him in the role as Michael Corleone, says the studios were convinced he’d be a disaster. He says, “They said I was too meek and mild for the part. But when we finished the movie, the same people who were against me and put me down whenever they could were all for me.”

Insomnia is the kind of movie you rarely see in summer: thoughtful, gripping and steeped in action that defines character. The fact that this superior thriller stars three Oscar winners — Al Pacino and Hilary Swank as cops and Robin Williams as the psycho they’re chasing — and is directed by Christopher Nolan, 31, the innovator who made us all think backward in Memento, only adds to the film’s hypnotic allure. It’s taut, tense and terrific.

Pacino, in one of the high points of his remarkable career, plays Will Dormer, an LAPD whiz sent to the Alaskan town of Nightmute to investigate the murder of a teenage girl. From the opener, with Will and his partner, Hap (Martin Donovan), flying over a glacier, an atmosphere of unease is firmly established. The tension between the partners is palpable — evidence-tampering on past cases can bring down both their careers if Hap spills what he knows to Internal Affairs.

Will, whose last name, Dormer, evokes sleep, isn’t getting any. And the Alaskan light is relentless. A sharp-eyed local cop, Ellie Burr, incisively played by Swank, tells Will this is the season of the midnight sun, when darkness just doesn’t fall. Even when sleepless Will yanks the drapes shut in his hotel room, the light glares. In Hillary Seitz’s script, loosely based on an austere 1997 Norwegian film of the same name, the sun is a metaphor for a conscience that won’t sleep. Such windy attitudinizing could break the spirit of a movie and an audience.

Not here. Nolan matches his Memento achievement with another triumph of style and substance. Setting a trap for the killer on a misty beach, Will accidentally shoots Hap. Or is it an accident? Will registers the fear in Hap’s eyes before he dies. So does the killer, who watches in hiding.

As Walter Finch, a novelist who befriended the murdered girl, Williams doesn’t enter the film until near the midpoint, but he brings a scary intensity to the role that’s electrifying. Trying to establish a bond with Will, first by phone, then in a meeting on a ferry, Walter talks with calm reason: “Killing changes you, Will. It’s like awareness.” Nolan stages a thrilling chase for cop and suspect across moving logs, but it’s Walter’s psychological pursuit of Will that makes this one of the year’s best movies. As Will goes sleepless for six days, Pacino — looking more ravaged than he ever has onscreen — lets us see this alert, quick-witted cop slowly, wrenchingly come unglued. It’s a brilliant performance in a film that will keep you up nights.

PETER TRAVERS (June 6, 2002)

`Sea of Love” tells an ingeniously constructed story that depends for its suspense on the same question posed by “Jagged Edge” and “Fatal Attraction”: What happens when you fall in love with a person who may be quite prepared to murder you? The movie stars Al Pacino, looking older and a little lined but more convincing than in most of his other recent roles as a homicide detective who is assigned to a messy murder case. The victim is a male who has been shot in his own bed, and the killer, it appears, was a woman. Tracking down leads, Pacino crosses paths with another detective (John Goodman) handling a similar case. They discover that both of their victims had placed rhyming ads in one of those singles magazines where people advertise for partners. Lacking any other clues, Pacino has a brainstorm: Why don’t he and Goodman place an ad of their own, and then date all of the women who answer it? By getting the women’s fingerprints on wine glasses, the cops may be able to discover the murderer. This notion leads to one of the movie’s better sequences, as Pacino devotes half an hour apiece to assembly-line dates with a series of lonely hearts, while Goodman plays the waiter at his table. Then something unexpected happens. There is chemistry between Pacino and one of the women (Ellen Barkin), and although it is unprofessional and possibly dangerous, he sees her again and they find themselves powerfully attracted to one another. The movie uses this attraction to set a frankly manipulative plot into motion. Is Barkin, in fact, the killer? Various hints are dropped, various clues are planted. Pacino is meanwhile portrayed as so seriously disturbed within himself that he would almost prefer to die at this woman’s hands than surrender his love. (The situation has an uncanny parallel with Glenn Close’s feelings for Jeff Bridges in “Jagged Edge.”) The purely plot elements in “Sea of Love” work well enough until the very end of the movie, I suppose, when the solution turns out to be a red herring. But what impressed me most in the film was the personal chemistry between Pacino and Barkin. There can be little doubt, at this point, that Barkin is one of the most intense and passionately convincing actresses now at work in American movies. Her performance in “The Big Easy” (1987) was Oscar caliber, and again this time she seems to cross some kind of acting threshold. When she roughly embraces Pacino, and then stalks around the room like a tigress in heat before returning to her quarry, there is an energy that almost derails the movie. For Pacino, “Sea of Love” is a reminder of the strong presence he established in street roles in the 1970s, before he drifted away into an unfocused stardom in too many softer roles. This time he seems sharp, edgy, complicated and authentic. Goodman (who plays Roseanne Barr’s husband on TV) makes a good partner for him, especially in the scenes where he stands by helplessly while his friend apparently chooses to be in love with a murderess. Movies like this need to work on two levels. The human elements should feel right, and the initial complications of the plot should not be shortchanged at the end. I think the ending of “Sea of Love” cheats by bringing in a character from left field at the last moment. Part of the fun in a movie like this is guessing the identity of the killer, and part of the problem with “Sea of Love” is that the audience is not fairly treated. Technically, I suppose, the plot can be justified. But I felt cheated. I had good feelings for the characters and their relationships, but I walked out feeling the plot played fast and loose with the rules of whodunits.

Pacino may not have found the right box office formula this past weekend with ‘Two for the Money’, but The Hollywood Reporter says he’ll try again in ’88 Minutes’.

The film begins shooting this week in Canada, and they’ve just added three new actors to the cast. Helen Hunt look-alike and poet Leelee Sobieski joins the movie along with Alicia Witt and Neal McDonald.

’88 Minutes’ is described as a thriller about a college professor receiving death threats while moonlighting as a forensic psychiatrist. The psychiatrist, played by Pacino, narrows down his list of possible suspects to a problem student (Sobieski), an ex-girlfriend (Witt), and a serial killer on death row (McDonald).

The movie’s title refers to a murder, which Pacino’s character believes will happen in 88 minutes.

Former Cheers star Kirstie Alley has been romantically linked to a new man – Hollywood icon Al Pacino.

The 54-year-old actress, who has been single since splitting from James Wilder five years ago, was spotted out with Pacino, 65, in Hollywood, and onlookers say that, although the couple were with friends, their rendez-vous had all the makings of a romantic date.

A source tells America’s Star magazine, “They were huddled for the whole evening at the Chateau Marmont, and, at one point, Kirstie was stroking his thigh as she talked to him.

“It was bizarre. They totally looked as if they were on a date.”

Representatives for the screen stars have yet to comment.

A kiss can be a beginning, an end, a lie. Some kisses are so intense that there is no tomorrow. These are kisses that never leave you, no matter how long you live; kisses that come out of the deep passion of loneliness rather than love. As a rule such kisses get you into trouble. But they’re also the only kind that really matter. Sea of Love has one of those kisses. Al Pacino is a middle-aged, divorced, alcoholic, New York cop on the hunt for a serial killer who responds to men’s personal ads and then shoots the individuals who’ve placed them. Ellen Barkin is a divorced toughie who talks of “animal attraction” and sees a world full of male “creeps” and “manipulators”. She’s also Pacino’s number one suspect. But that mass of honey hair, those asymmetrical lips, the beckoning eyes-he can’t deny her. Thus, eventually, the kiss. It’s 3 a.m. in Pacino’s bachelor apartment. They’re boozy, all over each other. He pins her against the wall, but it is really she who’s the aggressor. Animal-like she attacks with her lips, then pulls back in a moment of indecision and stalks around the room until she makes up her mind, at which point she flings off her jacket and comes at him. Boosting herself up, she clamps her legs around his waist, letting him bury his face in her chest. Part of her, though, is watching from some remove, fighting her own lack of control as he seeks refuge in her from all the cop shit that has claimed his life. A kiss, a killer, the urgent need of two lonely people. A simple change up for the traditional femme fatale? Maybe. For the moment, Al Pacino doesn’t care. One of those kisses that really matter has hold of him. He’s ignoring the possibility that this creature with a mouth could be the killer he’s been pursing, and that she could be his own killer too. Those who like their sex dangerous on cold, rainy nights understand. Movieline, Feb 2000

Icon Al Pacino spoke to Cal Fussman about Chekhov, the big breakthrough, and how it felt to win an Oscar.

WHEN I WAS A KID, my great-grandmother would occasionally give me a silver dollar. She was always very affectionate toward me. When she would give it to me, the rest of the family would always scream in unison, “No! No! Nooooooooo! Don’t give him the silver dollar!” And they meant it, because we were really poor. And as soon as it was in my hand, everybody would scream, “Give it back! Give it back!” and so I’d feel uncomfortable about taking it.

My father and mother split up when I was very young. I was an only child in a tenement in the South Bronx with my mother, my grandmother, and grandfather. We didn’t have much. So it was a big day when I found out you could get Tom Mix spurs off the back of a cereal box. Tom Mix was a cowboy hero in the movies, and he was huge. Huge! Just the fact that the spurs came in a box by mail made them huge. And so we sent away for the spurs.

I must have been about six years old when my great-grandmother died. I don’t remember much about the funeral, only bits and pieces, you know, everybody clustered together. We come home – and the Tom Mix spurs have arrived in the mail. I get all excited. But then I remember my great-grandmother has just died. I want to be happy, but… On that day, I learnt conflict.

I WAS HOME ALONE A LOT, growing up. My mother worked, but she would take me to the theatre to see all the movies. And the next day, all alone, I would act out the movie at home, playing all the roles. I saw The Lost Weekend at a very young age. Probably too young to see something like that. But I was very impressed with it. I didn’t know what was going on, but the passion was interesting to me. Ray Milland won an Oscar for that. In it, there’s a scene where he’s looking for a liquor bottle. When he was drunk, he hid the bottle in the apartment. Now he’s sober and he wants to find it. He knows it’s somewhere, but he forgets. He looks for it and finally finds it. I used to do that scene. On occasion, when my dad used to visit me, he’d take me to his relatives in Harlem and say, “Show ‘em the bottle scene.” I’d act it out and they’d all laugh. And I’d be thinking, Why are they laughing? It’s a very serious scene.

I WAS AT A STREET CARNIVAL when I was a kid and threw the ball and knocked down a couple of bottles, but they didn’t give me the prize. To this day, I can’t believe that they would do that. The injustice! I went back to the apartment and told my grandfather. And that look on his face, it comes back to me even now. It said: “You’re not expecting me to go down six flights, walk five blocks, and try to prove to some guy at the carnival that you knocked down the bottles and should get the prize.” I saw all that on his face. At the same time, he tried to tell me how sometimes this happens in life. And he was right. It happens in life.

MY MOTHER died before I made it. You know, here’s what I really remember about my mother. We’re on the top floor of our tenement. It’s freezing out. I have to go to school the next day. I’m maybe 10 years old. Down in the alleyway, my friends are calling up to me. They want me to go travelling around with them at night and have some real fun. My mother wouldn’t let me. I remember being so angry with her. “Why can’t I go out like everyone else? What’s wrong with me?” On and on I screamed at her. She endured my wrath. And she saved my life. Because those guys down in the alley – none of them are around right now. I don’t think about it that much. But it touches me now as I’m talking about it. She didn’t want me out in the streets late at night. I had to do my homework. And I’m sitting here right now because of it. It’s so simple, isn’t it? But we forget, we just forget.

ONE OF THE MOST striking things I’ve ever experienced was in the South Bronx, in one of those vaudeville houses that had been turned into a movie house. It seated thousands, and this travelling troupe came through. I was 14 and had never seen grown-ups act on a stage, though I’d been onstage myself. In elementary school, I was in a show where there was a big pot – the melting pot – and I was the representative from Italy, stirring. I can remember the kids in school asking for my autograph, and I would sign it “Sonny Scott.” It was catchy, you know.

Anyway, this troupe was doing The Seagull by Chekhov. There were about 15 or 20 people in the audience, all of us clumped together in the middle of a theatre that seated thousands. The play started and then it was over. That’s about how fast it went for me. It was magical. I remember thinking, Who was the person that wrote this? I went out and got a book of Chekhov’s stories. Then I went into the High School of Performing Arts. And one day I go into the Howard Johnson’s near the school for something to eat and the star of that show is pushing coffee behind the counter. My jaw dropped. I was in awe of this guy. I had to tell him. I remember that exchange. He was so grateful in a way, kind and understanding. He had to be all of 25. There he was, waiting on me at the Howard Johnson’s. Things are relative.

MY BIG BREAKTHROUGH came when I was 21. I was doing Creditors, a translation of an August Strindberg play. My friend Charlie Laughton directed it in an obscure theatre in the bowels of SoHo, which at the time wasn’t SoHo but just a bunch of warehouses.

The play takes place in Sweden at the turn of the century, and the character I played is named Adolf. It was the first time I had the opportunity to explore a world that I hadn’t come in contact with – and then to find myself actually inhabiting that role. It wasn’t the literal thing of being Swedish but the feeling that I was connected to the metaphor. It was a transforming experience, tantamount to falling in love. It felt like I didn’t need to do anything else in life but that. It was like discovering you could write. Suddenly you had an outlet. The concern was no longer whether you were going to get paid for it or whether you were going on to be successful or famous. It was, as they say, no longer the destination but the journey.

I was homeless at the time. I would sometimes sleep at night in the theatre where I performed. Sometimes Charlie would put me up at his place. It was hard, but at that age you can sleep anywhere. At the time, I even thought it was cool. I was alive to what I was doing.

There’s a time in your life when that happens to you if you’re lucky enough to have it happen. Then it goes. You start to make a living. But, you know, from time to time I try to think about life back then… and to stay in touch with it.

THE FIRST TIME I felt like I had money was in Boston, when I was in a repertory company. Before that, the closest I’d come was bus-transfer slips. When I was a kid, they had these transfer slips that came in yellow and pink and blue. There was a place where these rejected slips were, and we would stuff our pockets full of them. Even though they were valueless, there was a kind of value to them. You could imagine what it was like to have a pocket full of bucks.

Later on, I got a job delivering a trade paper called Show Business to the newsstands. Rain, sleet, and snow, I delivered. I’ll never forget – I got $12 for it. A 10 and two singles. I would always cash my 10 so I had 12 singles. Then I could peel off the singles at a bar and it looked like a bankroll.

I must have been 25 when I got that pay cheque from the repertory company in Boston. I went into a bar and had a martini and a steak. And afterwards, I still had money.

I WAS A YOUNG MAN when I went to shoot The Godfather. I remember being in Sicily, and it was so hot. If you haven’t slept and you’re not feeling well and it’s 120 degrees and you’re dressed in all wool, well, you just want to go home. You start feeling, What am I doing? I’m just shooting this over and over again and I don’t know what this is anymore.

All these Sicilian extras were lined up. They all got wool clothes on, too. This one guy, this Sicilian extra, says in Italian, “We’ve been out here all day. It’s hot. I’d like to take a break.” And the production guy says, “You take a break and you’re off the picture.” Now, the extra obviously has no money, which is why he’s doing it in the first place. He looks at the production guy, shrugs his shoulders, says “Mah!” and walks away. And I said to myself, This guy, he’s my hero.

These are the things that stay in my head. I loved that guy. Could I have done that? No. Could I do it now? Nahhhhhhhh. That was freedom. For a moment, that guy made me feel good. Suddenly, the wool was OK.

I didn’t know what was gonna happen with the movie – and then, the most amazing thing happened. We were in New York, doing the burial of Don Corleone. We’d shot all day. It’s six at night and I’m going home. I see Francis Coppola sitting on the gravestone, and he’s crying. Literally bawling. “Francis,” I say. “What happened? What’s the matter?” And he says, “They won’t give me another set-up.” Meaning, they wouldn’t let him shoot the scene again. So he’s sitting on the gravestone crying, and I thought, This guy is going to make a movie here. If he’s got that kind of passion, that kind of feeling about one set-up … That was the moment. I could feel it then. This guy cares. And that’s it. That’s the way to live – around people who care. It may be a tough ride, but something is going to come out of it.

I DIDN’T KNOW how to drive until I was 24 or 25. I didn’t need to, growing up in New York. But I had to learn for films. The money was coming in, and finally I got a car. I went with my friend Charlie and got this white BMW right out of the dealership. We get in the car and drive to my apartment in Manhattan. As we’re driving, I’m thinking, Y’know, this just isn’t me. It just didn’t feel right. But I said to myself, “What the hell, you’ll get used to it.” I parked it in front of the apartment, and we went up for a cup of coffee. When we came down to drive Charlie home, the car is gone. I remember looking at that space where the car used to be, looking at Charlie, and laughing.

And I had a flashback. Years before, Charlie and I were riding bikes and we went into Katz’s Deli on Houston Street. Now, the relationship I had with my bike was much different from the one I had with the car. I’d had that bike for a couple of years and used it to get from the Bronx to Manhattan. I didn’t have money at the time, and it was not only my form of transportation but a great source of fun and amusement. It was one of the few things I could do for free. Anyway, Charlie and I park our bikes on the street and go in the deli and get some hot dogs. Every other bite I would turn around to check on the bikes. I must have put mustard on the dog or something, because the next time I turned around the bikes were gone. I remember running outside and they were nowhere in sight. It wasn’t funny that time.

I WAS AT A STREETLIGHT ONCE, and I looked over at a young woman and smiled. She said, “Oh, hi, Michael.” You know, Michael from The Godfather. It was as though she’d stripped me right there of my anonymity. Just stripped me. I wasn’t Michael when I said hello. I was me smiling at a young woman on a street corner. I was seen, but I wasn’t, you know what I mean?

Until you are famous, you can never understand the haven of anonymity. There’s a line from the play The Local Stigmatic that goes like this: Fame is the perversion of the natural human instinct for validation and attention. That’s a bit of a hard line. But I’ll tell you this: Fame really complicates personal relationships. And when you put together fame and success, that can be a bit of a headache. But as Lee Strasberg, my friend and mentor, once said to me: “Darling, you simply have to adjust.”

I HAD A DEAR, dear friend who died of cancer at age 35. We were the same age. I went through the whole thing with him, saw it all. There was a moment I will never forget. It was outside his room. His father and mother came to visit him. I was very close to him, and I’d never once heard him talk about his father. He had a relationship with his parents that was complicated, and they hadn’t seen him for a while. But there was love there somewhere. Anyway, his father was in the room with him, and I was in the hall. And his father came out and looked me straight in the eye and said: “What are we gonna do?” I hesitated, but he had my arm. He looked at me and said, “If I could take his place …” Not only was this guy ready to die, ready to go right there on the spot for his child, but he was really asking me if I knew how he could do it. It was very powerful. And then I had children, and I understood.

I DIDN’T KNOW my dad well. He was an accountant. Finally, he got himself a little bar in California with a music stand. It was his place, which he felt good about. I went to visit him. I remember excusing myself to go to the bathroom. As I was going, I just felt a sense of somebody covering my back.

My father was married five times. What does that tell me? That he liked married life. OK, what does it tell me? It tells me we’re creatures of habit.

I’ve never married. On women, I can be funny and glib. Or I really can try to tell you. Where to start? I have always enjoyed the company of women. I have very close women friends. I could probably sit here for a long time and tell you why that is, or why I think it is. But to say a lot would be an understatement, right?

We’ll let it ride there.

I WENT FOR FOUR YEARS without doing a movie toward the end of the ’80s. It wasn’t a conscious decision. It just happened after I was unhappy with the results of the couple of movies I’d made.

I don’t want to mention the movies. But it bothers you when something that is potentially worthwhile doesn’t come through. You know how actors have recurring dreams about not knowing their lines? Well, I have a recurring dream where I’m in one of those movies that doesn’t work. In my dream, I’m saying, “But I didn’t know I was doing that movie. It was a mistake. Really. I didn’t know I was being filmed.”

It was time in my life to take a break and look around. I found myself wanting to get back to some of the things that I’d done earlier in my life, to observe more.

An actor with too much money will usually find a way to get rid of it. I poured my money into my own film, The Local Stigmatic, which I never released. I did some plays. All of a sudden the years passed, and suddenly I owed some back taxes and the mortgage was due and I was broke. But you know what really hit me? I was walking through Central Park and this guy comes up to me – didn’t know him at all – and he says, “Hey, what happened to you? We don’t see you, man.” I said, “Well, I… uh, I… uh,” and he said, “C’mon, Al, I want to see you up there!” And I recognised that I was lucky to have what I’ve been given. You gotta use it.

IT SURPRISED ME, the feeling I got when I won the Oscar for Scent of a Woman. It was a new feeling. I’d never felt it. I don’t see my Oscar much now. But when I first got it, there was a feeling for weeks afterward that I guess is akin to winning a gold medal in the Olympics. It’s like you’ve won a race and everybody knows you won. It’s a wonderful feeling, a complete feeling. I wish I had better words for it.

THERE’S A SCENE in Insomnia where I’m chasing a character played by Robin Williams over logs floating on cold water. You know, it’s what the loggers do, sort of a cross between rodeo and tap dancing on logs. A scene like that shouldn’t be perfect. It should be spontaneous. That’s what it’s about.

I like to avoid the word perfection. There’s the real apple. And then there’s the apple that looks like the perfect apple. The problem is when you bite into the perfect apple, it doesn’t have the taste or nourishment of the real apple.

AFTER EVERY MOVIE, Humphrey Bogart – even at the end – was very worried he’d never get another part. If you don’t get the job, there’s no work, there’s no outlet, there’s no expression, there’s no painting. You just live and hope that another day will come with a role that will serve as a canvas for you.

This article first appeared in Esquire magazine.