You Don’t Know Al: Why Al Pacino’s career is a lot more queer-coded than many people think

Image Credits: ‘Dog Day Afternoon,’ Warner Home Video (left) | ‘Cruising,’ Arrow Video (center) | ‘Angels In America,’ HBO (right)

For many, it’s likely Al Pacino’s career is defined by two towering characterizations: the college boy turned mafia boss Michael Corleone in The Godfather trilogy—described as “arguably cinema’s greatest portrayal of the hardening of a heart”—and Tony Montana, the bombastic Miami drug lord of Scarface, who went out in a blaze of guns and a mountain of cocaine. 

But Pacino—a stage actor who spent his 20s cutting his teeth in the theater world before catapulting to film stardom—has embodied a spectrum of characters across his career, defining and re-defining modern masculinity on screen.

In addition to playing the bisexual Sonny Wortzik in Dog Day Afternoon

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