Al Pacino to receive SAG-AFTRA lifetime achievement award

“I wondered and wandered most of my life but have always felt at home with a script and my fellow actors. It’s the work and the actors along the way that have been among the greatest joys of my life,” Pacino said in a statement Thursday.

Pacino’s acting career began on the stage in the 1960s with theaters in Boston and New York. In 1969 he made his Broadway debut in Does a Tiger Wear a Necktie?, which also led to his first Tony Award — best featured actor in a play. That same year, Pacino landed a small role in his first film, Me, Natalie. Two years later he was cast as Michael Corleone in Francis Ford Coppola’s seminal work The Godfather.

Pacino was most recently seen in the films Father Joe and Killing Castro.

SAG-AFTRA President Sean Astin said Thursday, “Like so many actors, I have spent my life in awe and appreciation of the force of nature that is Al Pacino. 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.”

Throughout his more than six-decade career, Pacino’s work has been recognized with an Academy Award, two Tony Awards, two Primetime Emmy Awards and two Actor Awards. He has also received the AFI Life Achievement Award, the Golden Globes’ Cecil B. DeMille Award, a Kennedy Center Honor and a Venice Career Golden Lion.

Pacino will receive the SAG-AFTRA Life Achievement Award during the Actor Awards on Feb. 28, 2027, in Los Angeles. 

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