Al Pacino recalls turning down role of Han Solo in ‘Star Wars’: “I gave Harrison Ford a career”
Al Pacino has recalled turning down the role of Han Solo in Star Wars.
Speaking recently to Variety, the Oscar-winning actor said he was offered “so much money” to play the iconic smuggler, but passed up the opportunity after failing to understand the script.
“Well, I turned down Star Wars. When I first came up, I was the new kid on the block, you know what happens when you first become famous. It’s like, ‘Give it to Al.’ They’d give me Queen Elizabeth to play,” said Pacino.
“They gave me a script called Star Wars. They offered me so much money. I don’t understand it. I read it. So I said I couldn’t do it. I gave Harrison Ford a career,” he joked.
Elsewhere in the interview, Pacino recalled one of the many injuries he sustained while filming Scarface.
“You can’t imagine what it was like to be there,” he said of action-heavy shoots. “The smoke, everyday you have to put yourself in a trance. One day, we’re shooting, fighting — ‘Say hello to my little friend’ — I shoot thirty rounds, I get hit, the gun goes down, and I’m supposed to be wounded. I go to pick up the gun, and I put my hand on the barrel. My hand stuck to it, and I had to go to the hospital. I was out for two weeks.
Pacino added that, after the nurse saw him covered in fake blood in the emergency room, she mistook him for “some scumbag”.
In June last year, the actor stated that he wants Timothée Chalamet to play him in a Heat prequel.
Pacino, who played detective Vincent Hanna in Michael Mann’s 1995 crime film, was taking part in a panel discussion about Mann’s novelisation of Heat 2 when the suggestion of a film was raised.
When he and co-star Robert De Niro were asked who they’d like to play the younger versions of their characters, Pacino shouted “Timothée Chalamet!” before adding: “He’s a wonderful actor.”
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Chris Edwards
NME
