Al Pacino sits in the pantheon of the greatest actors of all time with nine Academy Award nominations – though he only won one. In 1973 he started a run of either best actor or best supporting nominations at the Oscars for four consecutive years.<\/p>\n
The fourth and final nomination came from his portrayal of Sonny Wortzik in Dog Day Afternoon. It’s a film he initially turned down<\/a> because he was hoping to return to stage acting following his completion of The Godfather: Part II.<\/p>\n However, it was Frank Pierson’s screenplay that ultimately changed his mind.<\/p>\n “Pierson had structured [the story] quite beautifully; he really made it sing,” Pacino told interviewer Lawrence Grobel. “And Sidney Lumet is a genius in staging; he never tells you a word; just by the way he has you move, the scenes come alive. He pointed me in a direction and said, ‘Go here and go there.’ It’s extraordinary.”<\/p>\n ‘Dog Day Afternoon’ Ranked Among Greatest Crime Movies<\/p>\n Collider ranked Dog Day Afternoon as the No. 22 greatest crime movie of all time.<\/p>\n “Al Pacino has always been able to pull off some fantastically “big” performances, and the classic Dog Day Afternoon gives him plenty of chances to do just that. It’s a consistently tense film, following the true story of a bank robbery that spirals out of control and becomes a huge sensation in the news,” Collider wrote<\/a>.<\/p>\n “It’s such an efficiently paced and always engaging movie, with the action kicking off almost immediately and things never really letting up until the end. Dog Day Afternoon is the kind of film where it feels as though everything fits into place neatly, and as such, it’s hard to come up with too many things about it that can be criticized. When it comes to picking which Al Pacino movies are the best he ever starred in, Dog Day Afternoon will always be right up there.”<\/p>\n Dog Day Afternoon owns a strong 94% from critics and 90% from audiences on Rotten Tomatoes.<\/p>\n Related: 1971 Classic, Turned Down by John Wayne, Named One of Clint Eastwood’s Best Movies<\/a><\/p>\n This story was originally published by Men’s Journal<\/a> on Jul 27, 2026, where it first appeared in the News<\/a> section. Add Men’s Journal as a Preferred Source by clicking here.<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Al Pacino sits in the pantheon of the greatest actors of all time with nine Academy Award nominations…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":571433,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[32],"tags":[241046,14909,321,105114,93,241045,61,60,241047,175125,241048],"class_list":["post-571432","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-celebrities","tag-academy-award-nominations","tag-al-pacino","tag-celebrities","tag-dog-day-afternoon","tag-entertainment","tag-frank-pierson","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-lawrence-grobel","tag-sidney-lumet","tag-sonny-wortzik"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/571432","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=571432"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/571432\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/571433"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=571432"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=571432"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=571432"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}