"Pacino awed by Richard Burton"

Associated Press

NEW YORK - Al Pacino was like a starstruck schoolgirl when he met Richard Burton backstage during a 1980s Broadway revival of "Camelot."

Pacino said his idol asked him for his number and suggested they have dinner.

"I loved his voice, his presence. ... He was charming," Pacino said. "I was so flustered, I gave him my autograph."

It is King Richard, not King Arthur, that has Pacino's interest now. He produced, directed and starred with Alec Baldwin and Winona Ryder in "Looking for Richard," a documentary about the craft of acting and Shakespeare's "Richard III."

Richard III "is one of the greatest villains of all time," Pacino said in the latest Time Out New York magazine. "Violence was a way of life then, just as it is now."