I am the son of pure Italian parents but I’ve never been to Italy. I will definitely be going to Tuscany, the birthplace of both my parents, during my one-week spring break. As someone who is currently taking up filmmaking at NYU Film and Television Department, I have long been a fan of Italian-American actors. I guess they are among the best in Hollywood today. I would like to discuss about a few of them and why they are really very good in the movies that they have starred in.

Of course, the very first movie that Al Pacino starred in was the Mafia movie The Godfather and he was really very suave, very smooth and very natural there as Michael Corleone. That’s no surprise though because Al Pacino really has Italian blood and he graduated from acting college. Yet movie fans all over the United States swooned over him. I wasn’t yet born at the time when The Godfather was released though. Later on, Al Pacino would star with other great actors and work with other great directors. In Scarecrow, he starred with Gene Hackman. In Serpico, he was directed by the great Sydney Lumet. In Bobby Deerfield, he starred as a race car driver in a movie directed by Sydney Pollock. Boy, it’s really nice to rent all those classic Al Pacino movies, isn’t it? But wait, there’s still more.

There then followed a series of roles with Al Pacino interchanging between cop and criminal. Then the most powerful performance of his career came with Scarface, a movie directed by Brian de Palma. Released in 1983, it is considered the most violent film in its time. The next big thing for Al Pacino would come later as he starred opposite Warren Beatty, Dick Tracy. Al Pacino would later star in another movie which of them all, the one I like personally the most – Glengarry Glen Ross. Glengarry Glen Ross is the story of four salesmen who must compete with each other because only the two salesmen at the bottom will be fired after two weeks. Of course, Glengarry Glen Ross has a stellar testosterone cast consisting of Pacino, Alec Baldwin, Kevin Spacey, Jack Lemmon, Jonathan Pryce, Ed Harris and Alan Arkin. Al Pacino would star on to more great movies but this is the space I have left. As I’ve stated earlier, it’s really nice to rent all of Al Pacino’s movies.

So it turns out you need not go all the way to Hollywood - just get yourself to your local agencia de viajes and book your Italian trip to be amongt the stars!