Al Pacino

“Yes, I would say I am more concerned with the plays I’m going to do than the movies. I’m more comfortable in a play. In film, there’s always a certain sense of control, of holding back. The stage is different ; there’s more to act. There are more demands put on you, more experiences to go through. It is a different craft when it is on stage. The play is the source, it is orchestrated with words. In a movie, you are not dealing with as much as that. There are machines and wires. When you’re acting for a camera, it keeps taking and never giving back. When you perform with a live audience, the audience comes back to you, so that you and the audience are giving to each other, in a sense. It’s an extraordinary thing. It’s wild turf up there. The time I was doing Pavlo Hummel in Boston, I made connection with a pair of eyes in the audience and I thought, This is incredible, these eyes are penetrating me. I went through the whole performance just relating to those eyes, giving the whole thing to those eyes. I couldn’t wait at curtain to see who it was. When curtain call finally came, I looked in the direction of those eyes and it was a seeing eye dog. (Laughs) Belonged to a blind girl. I couldn’t get over it—the compassion and intensity and the understanding in those eyes…and it was a dog. What a profession!”

I am amazed by what technology can do