Sonny Boy

Al Pacino grew up poor in the South Bronx, raised largely by his grandparents after his parents split, and found the stage as a teenager with no sense that acting could ever be a career. Sonny Boy moves through his hardscrabble childhood, the friends he lost young, the years of struggle in New York theater, the audition luck and stubbornness that led to The Godfather, and the decades of film and stage work that made him one of the defining American actors of his generation. Writing near the end of a long life, Pacino reflects on craft, mentorship, money, fame, and the people who shaped him, treating the whole arc as a story about staying loyal to the work he loved.