Film Review: Lawyers and cripples win Oscars - your character is blind and acts rather like a lawyer at the end. Do you finally have a chance?

Al Pacino: Well, there is a feeling that those kinda roles appeal to the voters. There's usually more in them for actors to play. I think that is what's recognized by the awards. Sometimes they allow the actors to focus on their own characteristics, in their personal physicality or psychology - to forget themselves a little bit and, therefore, actually be more of themselves! That's what helps actors with these kinds of performances. That's why actors enjoy playing them.

FR: And that's not answering the question.

AP: [sardonic smile]

FR: This must be the most complete role of your career?

AP: If the director wants you to play a certain role, you hope that there must be something he sees in you to do it. What I do with a script is: first, I read it to myself. Then, read it aloud with my friends. Only then will I decide if it's - maybe - a part for me.

FR: There's a little touch of nearly every character you've played... tenderness, toughness.

AP: As you go on in life, you accumulate a lot of image, meet a lot of different people and experiences... And I felt Colonel Slade could be someone that some of my life could be expressed though. That's what partly attracted me. He's a composite of different people that I've known in my life. But [smile] you don't usually know that until you're playing the part because you start in your unconscious. At least, I do.

FR: Your director Marty Brest says: "God speaks through Al."

AP: He said that...?! That's frightening. I hope not! I'm very flattered by it. But... it's... overkind!

FR: There's a marked difference from the original Italian film - ever see it?

AP: Marty told me early on not to see Vittorio Gassman's film - for several reasons. I look forward to it now.

FR: The title's the same, yet there's no woman, no love story. In the original, Gassman fell, understandably, for Agostina Bellie.

AP: Well.... Isn't it fortunate that we have the Gassman film! We do have a love story but it's between a man and a boy [Chris O'Donnell]. There's a hint, though, that there was a moment when Slade could have made a connection with a woman and let it go for his reasons. So, the scent of a woman is not literal but figurative, haunting like a refrain. The choice not to have a love scene was certainly not mine! It was the film-makers' choice. They felt that hint was enough - and that's what the movie was about.

AL: I've experienced having lost four years in a row. You feel good being nominated for an Oscar, then you get turned into some kinda loser when you don't win it. Real strange! I didn't feel cheated or that I deserved something and didn't get it. That's honest. That's true. Now if you ask me whether Jack Nicholson deserved it or not - if he got it, he deserved it!"

FR: Ever played blind before?

AP: The first time - although I maybe did it in certain skits - was maybe ten years ago, playing a young man losing his sight. That gave me an opportunity to work a little bit then. this was really the first serious commitment to engage me for any length of time.

FR: How did you research it?

AP: Visiting sightless people, speaking with them, observing their behavior and also watching training-films made for people losing their sight and their relatives and for teachers of sightless people. There are many such films. I looked at them for many, many hours. They certainly helped me. with this kind of preparation, the hope is always that you'll pick and assimilate things into your unconscious. So that when you go to work on the part, you're left with some residue of what you've learned and, hopefully, it comes out through your instincts. Rather than -- for me anyway -- literally imitating what is blind. you hope that the sightless journey you went on in exploration and research will come out in a way that... you don't expect.

FR: The last scene of the movie - a little cloying...?

AP: A matter of taste. It's always interesting - how and where a film should end. I think in the film-maker's vision, the film wouldn't be complete unless they found a way for the boy and the colonel to need each other - and then serve that need. That's what the speech is there for, primarily, not so much for its content but rather for its affect on theme, n the metaphor of the movie. I'm happy with it. If you don't like it [Laughs] we'll change it in the video!

FR: You've pushed your usual low voice to an higher register for "Scent of a Woman" - even screaming.

AL: It's definitely a conscious choice to always try to find a different pitch for each new character - to find the voice of the character. When I find that voice, then I go with it. I always look for the voice - the head I call it. Like with Big Boy in "Dick Tracy", I looked for the head, then the body.

FR: And you do a mean tango - like dancing?

AL: Hah! I don't think of myself as a dancer. I did it in musical-comedy on the stage. So I had some dance training early on. I've never been that interested in dancing. Not in public! Some people sing in the shower, I dance in the shower.

FR: You sing as well!

AL: Why - you got a part for me? Gotta suggestion? If things like song'n'dance'n'stuff are in a part and integral to the movie, I'd consider it. I don't particularly want to get up in front people and dance. But it's an interesting dance, the tango, because, again it's playing a character that can do something that I can't! And like a lot of other things in movie characters, you learn from it - learn more about yourself. For instance, just the idea, the question of dancing is something I've never thought much about. If someone asked me to tango right now, I wouldn't be able to do it. I've forgotten it already. That's what acting is about in the end. You do it, in the moment, for the time, because it's serving what you're doing.

FR: And not just during shooting!

AL: That's true. I know certain things that actors did in movies that changed their lives - because they continue doing it. I used to wear the costumes of my characters - I built up my wardrobe that way! Burt I've given that up. [Pauses as an idea hits him]. I wonder what itd be like to dance the tango if I could see... In the part, I danced it blind. I wonder how I'd learn the tango if I used all my senses It's be different. So it's not fair. Every time you do learn something for a film, you learn it as someone else!

FR: How hairy was it driving the Farrari - blind?

AL: It's always the same in movies - they're pulling you! It's a little easier when you have sight to pretend that you're driving when they're pulling you. But I did drive it- blind - for a stretch. It was... interesting [Laughs] But I had Chris O'Donnell next to me and his foot was in brake reach. I didn't have the urge to go too fast. It appears faster, of course, on film. [Pause]. I knew about the stick-shift from playing a Formula One racing driver in "Bobby Deerfield." You see, you get it from the movies all the time... That's why we always say: "Hey - if something doesn't work so good in one movie it's preparing you for the next one."