How Al Pacino Changed My Life

It started out simply enough. I saw The Godfather only reluctantly the first time, determined not to like it so that I might be contrary. Contrariness was a thing to cultivate at fifteen. After the film, I walked out into the late afternoon sun a different person.  The first words I heard out of my mouth were, “I’m going to meet that man someday.”

I was referring to Al Pacino, though I did not discover the correct pronunciation of his last name until the next day, the first day of the rest of my life. Reading anything I could find about him, studying his films, Method acting, Stanislavski – I was given the impression of someone whose life work provided an anchor point round which all revolved. Tough childhood circumstances and my burgeoning creative identity left me open for a role model like Al Pacino. From him I borrowed the will to expand out of the oppressions of my early life. I was given the impetus to strive artistically. Earning money after school and weekends, from Maryland where I grew up I made little forays to New York at sixteen. By the time I was nineteen I lived in the city and attended HB Studio (The Herbert Berghoff –Uta Hagen Studio), where he once studied. Later I studied anatomy and painting at the Art Students League while working at the Cloisters Museum, where the wish to understand my existence from a metaphysical standpoint began forming in earnest. I lived an artist’s life.

It was out of desire to paint Al Pacino’s portrait that I started developing my artistic ability in high school and I sent him paintings and drawings along with letters in which I would use any and every new word in my vocabulary. The last painting given was after I’d moved to New York, delivered backstage during rehearsal of “The Basic Training of Pavlo Hummel”. His assistant at the time, Laurie, received it with the promise to give it to him. Many coincidences brought me to the restaurant/bar called Dobson’s on the fateful night of my first meeting with Mr. Pacino. Dobson’s was his haunt while doing “The Basic Training of Pavlo Hummel” at the Long Acre Theatre. I found this out through a cast member whom I met serendipitously at Joe Allen’s, an actor’s bar I went to on the night I saw the show.

To better understand what will follow, I need to give a little background. One of the acting courses I took was an Auditions class where I was once given a young ingénue part to read from – not something for which I would normally be cast. There came a point in the reading when I experienced very strongly two opposing emotions at once and this came through clearly enough that everyone in the class felt it. The teacher commented that though he might not have cast me upon sight, that reading would have had him reconsider or remember me for future work. This small event foreshadowed what was to come. My friend Eva accompanied me to Dobson’s that warm and balmy night – June 16th, 1977. The maitre took us to a small table behind which was arranged a long table marked “reserved”. We drank white sangria. It was delicious and easy to drink. My body felt full of electricity - the drink dampened the crackle.

Al Pacino walked in with his entourage.  His assistant spotted me and indicated my presence to him as he sat down. Eva sat facing the long table, and would tell me what was going on while my mind raced. Periodically he would look over at us until finally Eva succumbed to impatience and got up to speak with him. She introduced herself and said that her friend “Kelly Rivera” was an artist that had been sending him paintings for years. He told her that he knew, he had received the paintings and liked them a lot – he planned to come over to tell me firsthand.

He stood before me, I looked up and then it happened – remember the acting class experience where two opposing emotions presented themselves simultaneously? Magnify that thousands of times and you have a taste of what happened inside me. Only everything I’d ever felt about anything came crashing in like an avalanche – my speech function seemed to shut down in the flood. It is said that the distance between words and their living is vast, but the vastness can be traversed in a single moment.  That moment can be an eternity.  

I struggled to gently invite him “Please have a seat” but instead out of my mouth came a booming “SIT DOWN!” I kept looking away from him in a vain attempt to gain some control – no doubt appearing quite spastic. Meanwhile, Mr. Pacino was visibly and understandably affected by my state. He went into his Pavlo Hummel character, talking out of the side of his mouth in a particular voice saying over and again “Thank you very much, I really like your paintings, Thank you very much…” backing away, head bobbing up and down nervously. He backed all the way out the door and disappeared.

Beneath all the commotion of my illusions shattering in that one awakening moment was a deep silence. In that moment of mystery and compassion there was a bitter soul food that nurtured the All of me. I say this with full conviction now. At the time I felt the sudden nakedness of having been stripped of many veils and thrown into a cold new ocean of meanings. Sometimes one must surrender what one knows to become what one is. Clearly any focus I had on Al Pacino had to change – the quest had been completed, with an outcome that pointed the way inward. I went into a phase of retreat from all artistic activity.

About a year later, a friend convinced me to audition to work with a good acting coach she knew. It was time to jump back into the life stream again. Waiting for the 5th Avenue bus at 96thto take me to my audition appointment, the avenue was unusually quiet. A cab seemed to glide softly to a halt on the east side and even before the passenger emerged, with a jolt the whole of me knew it was Al Pacino. Despite my composure this time, our exchange was brief and awkward. Based on his manner I realized the communication I wanted to have with him would be impossible – that first encounter had marked me unfavorably and indelibly. I quickly walked away.

I would see him on the street unexpectedly during the months that followed. These sightings had great synchronicities with what was happening in my life, and indeed I had a life that was unfolding with the freshness of a newborn bud. I remember one magnificent evening when it was snowing and while walking in it, with soft elation, I decided to gift everyone on my Christmas list despite my recent unemployment. In that instant I looked up and there he was, across the street, walking.

One morning as I stood waiting to cross 96th street at Madison heading downtown, I shifted my gaze from the “Don’t Walk” sign to the cab almost in front of me and there he sat, staring. He smiled and motioned for me to come over. What an incredible rush of exuberance I felt walking toward that lovely old checker cab!

But when I got to the door he pointed to the lock, shrugged his shoulders, and took off with the light change. He was let out just down the block and I could see him hastily looking in my direction after getting out of the cab before heading toward his destination. A week later, same spot, he was in a pale yellow colored BMW with a couple of folks – the driver might have been his assistant. I did my best to ignore them as I went across the street but at the last moment looked in their direction only to find them looking back at me, Pacino pointing. That was the last I saw him.

This story has a happy ending of many beginnings that followed and have culminated into the wonderful life I live. I am a professional artist (www.anessentialartist.com) owner of a business custom blending natural perfumes (www.perfumerie.com), proud mother, wife of a genius Grammy award winning sound engineer, and presently my theatre love has been channeled into the study and performance of Flamenco dance. With all this activity it is little wonder I seldom see movies anymore. The last Al Pacino film I saw was Scent of a Woman, and it was delicious to watch him shine.

I remain grateful to this gifted actor’s excellence for drawing my attention toward a distant star. And I am, in the ripeness of my fifty three years of living, still awestruck over the brilliant invisible architect that brought us together tragically, magically and helped me grow a beautiful life – my own, no less.

Grace Kelly Rivera