Al Pacinomay have become a Hollywood icon for roles inThe Godfather,Scarfaceand many other films, but he could also have been a certain Han Solo in George Lucas’Star Warsfranchise. While the Oscar-winner doesn’t have many regrets about not taking onthe role made famous by Harrison Ford, he recently addressed why he turned the role down while promoting his current movie,The Ritual.
While Pacino was already well-known by the time he was offered the scriptfor Star Wars, when he read the role, he simply did not know what any of it was actually about. He toldEW:
“I said, ‘I think I’m in the mood to make Harrison Ford a career.’ [Spielberg, Lucas, and others] were in the late-’60s making this. They were real idealists coming into the ’70s with great films all over the globe. So, it was a wonderful place that I actually saw, I went to the [Sentinel Building] and everything before I did Godfather with them. So I loved their work, but I was doing a show on Broadway at the time, and they handed me this script, and I thought, I don’t understand.
“[I thought], I must be out of space myself, but I looked at this thing and I sent it to Charlie Loughton, my friend and mentor, actually. I said, ‘What do you make of this?’ He was pretty wise and he said, ‘I don’t get it, Al. I dunno. I don’t get it.’ I said, ‘Well, I don’t either; what are we going to do? They offered me a fortune, but I don’t know. No, I can’t play something if I don’t speak the language.’”
Al Pacino Was Not the Only Actor to Turn Down a ‘Star Wars’ Role
While there are few people who would turn down a role in theStar Warsfranchise now – there are still some who don’t have any desire to dabble in that kind of big IP – but back in the late ‘70s there were many who were offered the chance to audition forStar Warsthat never appeared in the franchise. As casting director Dianne Crittenden once revealed:
“Anybody who was up-and-coming at that point was certainly brought in. There was one day we had in Nick Nolte, Richard Dreyfuss. John Travolta was one of the guys. And we talked about Robert De Niro. We actually didn’t really audition people [initially], we just brought them in to meet George.”
It is safe to say that, in the end, the right man ended up in the role of Han Solo, and those who missed out on roles didn’t exactly suffer for not joining the galaxy far, far away. Pacino,following his Godfather success, went on to gain plenty of critical acclaim, including winning an Oscar for his role inScent of a Womanin 1992.
