Al Pacino's three closest childhood friends succumbed to heroin.
Acting, and his mother's love, saved Pacino from a similar fate, as he vividly recalls in his forthcoming memoir "Sonny Boy."
In an excerpt titled "Early Scenes" in the current issue of The New Yorker, Pacino looks back on his childhood roaming the South Bronx with his wild friends.
Abandoned by his father, Pacino and his mother lived with his Sicilian grandparents in a small apartment in a multi-cultural neighborhood near the Bronx River. His mother's father, a plasterer, really did come from the small Sicilian village of Corleone.
Pacino's emotionally fragile mother took her "Sonny Boy" to the movies from an early age and did her best to protect him from the worst excesses of the streets. Through the years, Pacino rarely saw his father, although he remembers him fondly.
At age 16, Pacino discovered the theater, viewing a small company's production of Anton Chekhov's "The Seagull" at the Bronx's Elsmere Theater.
The self-taught actor rode the subways reading the Russian writer's plays. Later, after classes at New York's High School for the Performing Arts and lessons at an actor's studio, he recited Shakespeare soliloquies while walking the city streets. He and his roommate, Martin Sheen, worked menial jobs at small theaters seeking to break into acting.
His mother's accidental drug death left Pacino numb with grief. In his warm recollections of her, he never mentions her name.
Despite the devastating loss, Pacino refuses an offer to return home and live with his grandparents. "Early Scenes" ends with his decision to begin the next act.
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