Al Pacino Shares Hilarious Reason He Turned Down Iconic ‘Star Wars' Role
Al Pacino revealed that he turned down the role of Han Solo in Star Wars because he didn't 'understand' the script.
'I said, 'I think I'm in the mood to make Harrison Ford a career,'' the legendary actor joked to Entertainment Weekly while promoting his newest movie, The Ritual.
The legendary The Godfather star recalled working with a group of directors dubbed the 'Movie Brats' in the 1960s and '70s, which included the likes of Steven Spielberg, Francis Ford Coppola, and Star Wars creator George Lucas.
'They were real idealists coming into the '70s with great films all over the globe,' Pacino said.
But when Pacino received the Star Wars script and read it over, he said it felt like he was reading a 'different language.'
'I loved their work, but I was doing a show on Broadway at the time, and they handed me this script, and I thought, I don't understand,' he said. 'I must be [in] out of space myself.'
Pacino sent the script to his 'friend and mentor' Charlie Laughton, asking him: 'What do you make of this?'
'He was pretty wise and he said, 'I don't get it, Al. I dunno. I don't get it,'' Pacino recalled. 'I said, 'Well, I don't either; what are we going to do? They offered me a fortune, but I don't know. No, I can't play something if I don't speak the language.''
And just like that, Pacino passed on the role of Han Solo in the 1977 film Star Wars: Episode IV – A New Hope—a role that eventually went to Ford and solidified his place among the Hollywood greats.
Yet Ford has also acknowledged that the premise of the film might appear 'odd' at first to people.
'Like, there's a seven-foot-tall man in a dog suit. There's also a beautiful princess, a wise old warrior, and a callow youth. Then, there's a smart-a--. I know the part I play. And it's fun!' he told Inquirer in 2023.
Ford said that at first he thought the story was 'a fairy tale,' but that those kinds of stories have 'always been successful, whether it's a written or filmed fairy tale.'
'At that point in my career, it didn't matter to me that the film would become hugely successful and end up changing movie history,' he noted.
But the Star Wars franchise propelled Ford's career, and the actor has long said how 'grateful' he is for the films and how much they 'changed my life.'
'I had opportunities that extended beyond director George Lucas and my success in making that film,' Ford said. 'It gave me freedom and opportunities that I never had imagined I might have.'
Ford got the part over other soon-to-be legendary actors including Sylvester Stallone, Kurt Russell, and Burt Reynolds.
'I just didn't want to play that kind of role at the time,' Reynolds told Business Insider in 2016, sharing a similar sentiment to Pacino. 'Now I regret it. I wish I would have done it.'
Shortly after the release of Star Wars: Episode IV – A New Hope, Ford went on to star in Raiders of the Lost Ark in 1981, as well as in the cult-classic Blade Runner a year later.
The same year as A New Hope's release, Pacino starred in Sydney Pollack's Bobby Deerfield. One year later, he starred in Norman Jewison's And Justice for All, which earned Pacino his fifth of nine (so far) Oscar nominations.
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