Al Pacino Says He Takes Roles In Bad Films To Try And Improve Them

The 79-year-old discussed the 'bad habit' in a joint interview with fellow great Robert De Niro.

"I'm starting to want to do films that aren't really very good and try to make them better. And that's become my challenge.

"I don't think I go in thinking it's not gonna be very good, but it's like Bob said - sometimes they offer you money to do something that's not adequate. And you talk yourself into it. And somewhere within you, you know that this thing is gonna be a lemon.

"But then, when it comes full circle, and you see it, you say, 'Oh, no. I'm gonna make this better'. And you spend a lot of time and you're doing all these things, and you say, 'If I can just get this to be a mediocre film', and you get excited by that. It's an impulse that I've got to just put away now."

Noble stuff. Sure, he's getting paid a tonne to do it, but still.

Reflecting on how he managed to forge such a successful career, Pacino said: "It's a combination of luck and other things. Let's face it.

"Just something as simple as being at the right time, the right place. I mean, to come out of the '70s, when our kind of actor was following the way paved by Brando and Dean and Newman and all these great people back then who opened the door for a lot of people like us. And Scorsese and Coppola and Spielberg and Lumet and these people-they were all around then. And Lucas and De Palma.

"This was a period at that time when film was flourishing. It was different than the time before it, I think. Not better or worse, mind you. It was different. And I think that there was a new kind of person out there, in that period."