Al Pacino starred in Sea of Love in 1989 after a four-year hiatus and gave a box office hit with his neo-noir crime thriller. Pacino’s last film before Sea of Love, Revolution, was a critical and commercial disaster. But it was Diane Keaton who put him back on the top of Hollywood by offering him Harold Becker’s movie. Before barging into his lawyer’s office and saving his career, she called him an idiot to his face in front of his lawyer.
Al Pacino played an NYPD detective in the film trying to catch a serial killer who targets and kills their victims through the singles column in a newspaper. The film, made on a budget of $19 million, grossed over $110 million at the box office.
Diane Keaton Called Al Pacino An Idiot Before Saving His Career
Diane Keaton and Al Pacino shared a good relationship after working on The Godfather films. He recalled the time when Keaton came into his lawyer’s office and called him an “idiot.” During an interview with the SAG-AFTRA Foundation, Al Pacino shared that Keaton asked his lawyer, “Do you know who he is?”. When the lawyer responded ‘yes’ confusingly, Keaton fired back, “No, you don’t, no, he’s an idiot, and you’ve gotta take care of him.”
She went on to offer him the role that would revive his career in the early 90s. Keaton told the Scarface actor that he had fallen off the A-list status and had to pursue films to climb back to the top. She pulled some strings and got him the role of Detective Frank Keller in Sea of Love. Before Al Pacino took the role, Dustin Hoffman was very much interested in it and even entered negotiations to star in the film.
Diane Keaton believed that the role would perfectly fit the Insomnia actor. Pacino needed the money at the time after the four-year break from Hollywood. While he starred in one of the cult classic movies of all time, Scarface, in 1983, some bad choices, like Revolution, made him way less successful than he should have been. Pacino shared with the SAG Foundation:
“She says, ‘Al, come here, I’ve got something you’re going to like, it’s you, because you’ve got to get back, you’re not on the A-list – here it is’. She gave me Sea of Love. She says, ‘This is a good picture for you.’ I knew I had to work, I did, I needed the money too.”
His career took off once again after Sea of Love, starring in films like Dick Tracy and The Godfather III. More recently, he played critically acclaimed roles in The Irishman, Once Upon a Time… in Hollywood, and House of Gucci.
It Was Not The Only Crazy Story Al Pacino Had To Share About Diane Keaton
Al Pacino and Diane Keaton showed great chemistry in the Oscar-winning classic film The Godfather. When the film celebrated its 45th anniversary in 2017 at the Tribeca Film Festival, Al Pacino shared a story from The Godfather set that Keaton did not remember at all. Pacino shared that he was really worried about the film at the time.
During the wedding scene between Michael Corleone and Kay Adams in the film, the crew was running behind schedule and the scene had to be filmed in artificial light. The chaos-filled production exhausted both actors so much that they decided to get drunk. As Pacino shared this story with the audience, Keaton seemed amused as she had no memory of the event at all.
On that night, they shared apprehensions that The Godfather would be the worst film ever made. Both actors were so wrong about this prediction, as the film went on to grab multiple awards at the Oscars, Golden Globes, BAFTA, and Grammys, alongside its record box office.
Sea of Love is available for rent on AppleTV+, while The Godfather trilogy is available for streaming on Paramount+.
