Al Pacino, the nine-time Oscar-nominated star of such iconic films as The Godfather and it sequels, Dog Day Afternoon, Scarface and his Best Actor Academy Award-winning role in Scent of a Woman, will receive the 62nd SAG-AFTRA Life Achievement Award.
The honor, bestowed annually by the actors’ guild for career and humanitarian accomplishments, will be handed out during SAG-AFTRA’s 2027 Actor Awards ceremony February 28 at the Shrine Auditorium & Expo Hall in Los Angeles. The union made the announcement Thursday.
Pacino’s career spans seven decades, with his major film debut coming with 1971’s The Panic in Needle Park. His breakthrough came when Francis Coppola cast him as Michael Corleone in The Godfather, earning him his first Oscar nom (for Supporting Actor) for a character he would reprise in two sequels. That first role led to films like Serpico, Dog Day Afternoon and 1983’s Scarface, playing the Cuban mobster Tony Montana.
His other film credits in that stretch included Sea of Love and Dick Tracy, and then in 1992 he became the first male actor to score two acting Oscar noms for two films in the same year, for Glengarry Glen Ross and Scent of a Woman. The latter, in which he played the blind, ornery Lt. Col. Frank Slade on the brink, earned him his Oscar.
Other 1990s movie hits for Pacino included Frankie and Johnny, Carlito’s Way, Heat, Looking for Richard, The Devil’s Advocate, Donnie Brasco, The Insider and Any Given Sunday.
His TV credits include playing Roy Cohn in HBO’s 2003 adaptation of Tony Kushner’s Pulitzer-winning play Angels in America, winning him an Emmy, Golden Globe and a SAG Award. He won another Emmy for playing Dr. Jack Kevorkian in HBO’s TV movie You Don’t Know Jack. Also for HBO, he portrayed Penn State football coach Joe Paterno in Paterno and Phil Spector in Phil Spector.
More recently, films included Quentin Tarantino’s Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, Martin Scorsese’s The Irishman and Ridley Scott’s House of Gucci, and he played Nazi hunter Meyer Offerman for two seasons on Prime Video’s Hunters.
His humanitarian efforts and social causes have included participating in 2001 America: A Tribute to Heroes telethon supporting September 11 families; the ONE Campaign’s 2005 Make Poverty History initiative addressing extreme poverty, hunger and AIDS; and a 2012 campaign supporting Hurricane Sandy relief. He supports the Shakespeare Center of Los Angeles, and in 2009 he received the Southern California Chapter of the Arthritis Foundation’s Jane Wyman Humanitarian Award.
“Like so many actors, I have spent my life in awe and appreciation of the force of nature that is Al Pacino,” SAG-AFTRA president Sean Astin said in a release Thursday announcing the award, which most recently went to Harrison Ford last year, preceded by Jane Fonda (2024), Barbra Streisand (2023), Sally Field (2022), Helen Mirren (2021) and Pacino Godfather II co-star Robert De Niro (2020). “When you watch him perform, you are witnessing a student and a master. Al Pacino is an artist of extraordinary courage, intensity and heart whose work has always set an exceptional standard of skill and talent. All of that and he’s just plain fun to watch. SAG-AFTRA is proud to celebrate Al Pacino with our union’s highest honor.”
Pacino will add SAG-AFRTA’s highest honor to a list of accolades that includes two Tony Awards (Best Featured Actor for 1969’s Does a Tiger Wear a Necktie? in his Broadway debut and Best Actor for 1977’s The Basic Training of Pavlo Hummel), the AFI Life Achievement Award, the Golden Globes’ Cecil B. DeMille Award and a Kennedy Center Honor.
“I wondered and wandered most of my life but have always felt at home with a script and my fellow actors,” Pacino said. “It’s the work and the actors along the way that have been among the greatest joys of my life. It’s an honor to be recognized by SAG-AFTRA in celebrating the journey.”