Al Pacino notable work Scarface
1980s
Pacino's career slumped in the early 1980s; his appearances in the controversial Cruising, a film that provoked protests from New York's gay community, and the comedy-drama Author! Author!, were critically panned.
However, his performance in Scarface (1983), directed by Brian De Palma, proved to be a career highlight and a defining role. Upon its initial release, the film was critically panned due to violent content, but later received critical acclaim. The film did well at the box office, grossing over US$45 million domestically. Pacino earned a Golden Globe nomination for his role as Cuban drug lord Tony Montana.In 1985, Pacino worked on his personal project, The Local Stigmatic, a 1969 off-Broadway play by the English writer Heathcote Williams. He starred in the play, remounting it with director David Wheeler and the Theater Company of Boston in a 50-minute film version. The film was not released theatrically, but was later released as part of the Pacino: An Actor's Vision box set in 2007.His 1985 film Revolution about a fur trapper during the American Revolutionary War, was a commercial and critical failure, which Pacino blamed on a rushed production, resulting in a four-year hiatus from films. At this time Pacino returned to the stage. He mounted workshop productions of Crystal Clear, National Anthems and other plays; he appeared in Julius Caesar in 1988 in producer Joseph Papp's New York Shakespeare Festival. Pacino remarked on his hiatus from film: "I remember back when everything was happening, '74, '75, doing The Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui on stage and reading that the reason I'd gone back to the stage was that my movie career was waning! That's been the kind of ethos, the way in which theater's perceived, unfortunately." Pacino returned to film in 1989's Sea of Love, when he portrayed a detective hunting a serial killer who finds victims through the singles column in a newspaper. The film earned solid reviews.
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