The Acting Style of Al Pacino

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Many actors have studied Stanislavsky innovative technique for actors, emphasizing emotional truth and inner motivation and known today as the Stanislavsky Method, revolutionized modern acting. This method has taught actors several techniques that have improved their style. Actor, Al Pacino is one of the greatest actors of all time. He studied at The Actors Studio, in New York and it has been the main source and inspiration for a naturalistic acting technique known in America as "the Method." Under its artistic director, Lee Strasberg, the Studio adapted many of the techniques developed by Russian director Konstantin Stanisalvsky for training actors to feel and realistically portray the emotions of their characters. The intense emotional realism achieved by workshop students—who have included Marlon Brando, James Dean, Geraldine Page, Rod Steiger, Robert De Niro, and Jane Fonda—has influenced actors worldwide. (Actors Studio," Microsoft® Encarta® Encyclopedia 2000)

Al Pacino better known, as Sonny has not only changed the way that I view actors. He has taught me what a true actor is. He is a brilliant man who has mastered Stanislavsky 's method. Pacino also has a sense of humor and there is never a dull moment on the set…"I was in a play once in Boston. It's a long play, about three hours and I'm on the stage a lot during it. And I caught... I got this feeling from the audience. These eyes were sort of looking at me. And I got a sense that there was a kind of rapport and I was relating and it was working, somehow it was giving me something back and. Well, I went through the entire play sort of gearing the performance in the part of the audience that I felt those eyes. So I had to see at curtain call who that was. Right? It came curtain call, I looked over in the direction of those eyes - it was Seeing Eye dogs. (The Today Show, NBC)

Al pacino said, "The actor becomes an emotional athlete. The process is painful - my personal life suffers". In other words, "Acting is simply more than walking out on the stage" as Dr. Stevenson would put it. It is more than just reading the lines. To be a true actor, I believe it takes inner capabilities such as learning life. In all the books I have read, all the chapters we have reviewed in class, and in all honesty…Al Pacino is an actor I cannot forget.

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