Michelle Pfeiffer: Al Pacino Didn’t Want Me in ‘Scarface’ Until ‘I Cut Him’ in Audition
Scarface may be one of Michelle Pfeiffer‘s most iconic roles but landing the role wasn’t easy for the Oscar nominee. In a recent episode of the SmartLess podcast, Pfeiffer, 67, opened up about the audition to play Elvira Hancock, who married Al Pacino‘s character Tony Montana. At the time, Pfeiffer was just 23 years old and fresh off the set of Grease 2, and Pacino was not sold on the actress in the part — until she accidentally wounded him during the screentest.
She admitted on the podcast that she was inexperienced when she began auditioning for the role that would make her famous: “I just didn’t have a lot of experience under my belt. And I was terrified. Every night I was terrified … I didn’t feel worthy. I didn’t feel like I had the chops. I didn’t have any experience behind me. I had zero confidence.” But her anxiety about the role wasn’t all in her head; she noted on the podcast that “Al will admit this: he didn’t really want me for the part.”
Pfeiffer auditioned for the role of Elvira multiple times over the course of several months — but felt with each additional audition, she got worse. “First of all, I come in, I do a great reading for Brian De Palma and the casting director … It just happened to be good,” Pfeiffer recalled. “Then, they want to bring me back to meet Al. Over the course of two months, I just get worse and worse and worse, because I’m just afraid. And by the end, I’m bad. And I don’t blame him. [Pacino] just was like, [Pfeiffer is] bad. And Brian finally comes to me and says, ‘You know, doll, it’s just not going to work out.’ I’m like, ‘I know, man, I’m sorry.’ Because Brian really wanted me.”
Universal/Everett Collection
Resigned to not getting the role, Pfeiffer moved on, remembering, “As disappointed as I was, I was so happy to be done with it. So at least a month goes by, and I get a call. They want to bring me in to screen test.”
Prior to that audition, Pfeiffer thought that her chances were almost zero of getting the role. She said of her final audition, “I show up and I don’t even give a s— because I know I’m not getting this part … It was my best work of the film, of course.”
In a dinner scene, Pfeiffer dramatically knocked items off a table. She explained, “I swipe the table of the dishes, and glasses break, the dishes break. Cut. There’s blood everywhere … [but] I didn’t cut me. I cut Al. I thought, ‘Well, there goes that part.’” However, she said that Pacino wasn’t upset at all: “Actually, I think that was the day he was like, ‘Yeah, yeah, yeah … she’s not bad.'”
While the movie received mixed reviews, it has since been called a classic and one of her best performances.
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July 2019
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