Al Pacino
6
film was the dark comedy ...And Justice for All, which again saw Pacino lauded by critics for his wide range of acting abilities, and nominated for the Best Actor Oscar for a third time. However he was to lose out that year to Dustin Hoffman in Kramer vs. Kramer - ironically a role that Pacino had declined. During the 1970s, Pacino had four Oscar nominations for Best Actor, for his performances in Serpico, The Godfather Part II, Dog Day Afternoon, and ...And Justice for All. He continued performing onstage, winning a second Tony Award for The Basic Training of Pavlo Hummel and performing the title role in Richard III for a record run on Broadway, despite poor notices from critics. Pacino's career slumped in the early 1980s, and his appearances in the
1980s
controversial Cruising and the comedy-drama Author! Author! were critically panned. However, 1983's Scarface, directed by Brian DePalma, proved to be a career highlight and a defining role. Upon its initial release, the film was critically panned but did well at the box office, grossing over US$45 million domestically. Pacino earned a Golden Globe nomination for his role as Cuban drug dealer/lord Tony Montana. In 1985, Pacino worked on his most personal project, The Local Stigmatic, a 1969 Off Broadway play by the English writer Heathcote Williams. He starred in the play, remounting it with director David Wheeler and the Theater Company of Boston in a 50-minute film version. It was later released as part of the Pacino: An Actor's Vision box set in 2007. His 1985 film Revolution was a commercial and critical failure, which Pacino blamed on a rushed production, resulting in a four-year hiatus from films, during which Pacino returned to the stage. He mounted workshop productions of Crystal Clear, National Anthems and other plays; he appeared in Julius Caesar in 1988 in producer Joseph Papp's New York Shakespeare Festival. Pacino remarked on his hiatus from film: "I remember back when everything was happening, '74, '75, doing The Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui on stage and reading that the reason I'd gone back to the stage was that my movie career was waning! That's been the kind of ethos, the way in which theater's perceived, unfortunately." Pacino returned to film in 1989's Sea of Love, which earned solid reviews. His greatest stage success of the decade was David Mamet's American Buffalo,