Al Pacino: Roles He Missed That Other Actors Made Famous

Known for his iconic roles in “The Godfather,” “Scarface,” and “Scent of a Woman,” Al Pacino has played both mobsters and cops, and he’s an avid Shakespeare fan. He’s been careful about the roles he’s chosen for himself, but he has turned down some roles that made other actors famous.

“I’m not a very good judge of what’s good,” he said one evening at the Palladium, the London Evening Standard reported in 2013.

That night, as British TV personality Emma Freud listed a string of roles that could have been his, including Bruce Willis’s part in “Die Hard,” Pacino made comments, the Evening Standard noted. “I gave that boy a career,” he said of Willis. And of the Hans Solo role in “Star Wars”: “’Star Wars’ was mine for the taking but I didn’t understand the script,” the newspaper said.

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Han Solo in “Star Wars”
Harrison Ford made a name for himself as Han Solo in “Star Wars,” but it might have gone to Pacino. “I remember not understanding (the script) when I read it,” he told MTV at the Toronto Film Festival in 2014. “I was in ‘The Godfather.’ They didn’t care if I was right or wrong for the role, if I could act or not act.”

Ted Kramer in “Kramer vs. Kramer”
Pacino said he could “smell” that the 1979 divorce drama “Kramer vs. Kramer” wasn’t for him. “There were times in my life when I didn’t even read what was being offered me,” he said in Lawrence Grobel’s book, “Al Pacino: In Conversation with Lawrence Grobel.” “Sometimes I can smell something’s that’s not right for me.” Luckily for Dustin Hoffman, the part smelled just fine. Hoffman was getting divorced at the time and said in a 2001 documentary about the film that he found the acting cathartic, The Huffington Post noted.

Captain Willard in “Apocalypse Now”
In Grobel’s biography of Pacino, Pacino told him director Francis Ford Coppola came to him for the Captain Willard role in the Vietnam War movie “Apocalypse Now.” “He wanted me to do it,” Pacino told Grobel. “I told him I hadn’t been in the Army and I didn’t intend to go in the Army now – and if I were to go, I wouldn’t want to go to war with him. He said to someone later, ‘Al would do the film if we could film it in his apartment.’” The role of Captain Benjamin Willard went to Martin Sheen, who was nominated for Best Actor for his performance.

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