SAG-AFTRA announced Thursday that Al Pacino will receive a SAG-AFTRA Life Achievement Award at the 33rd Annual Actor Awards in February.
Over his nearly 60-year career, Pacino has won an Academy Award, two Tonys, two Emmys, and two Actors Awards. His previous lifetime-achievement honors include the AFI Life Achievement Award, the Kennedy Center Honor, and the Golden Globes’ Cecil B. DeMille Awards.
He has been nominated for three Actors Awards for his TV performances in “Angels in America”, “You Don’t Know Jack” and “Phil Spector”, winning the first two. His only individual Actor Award nomination for a film performance came for “The Irishman” in 2020, although he also received nominations as part of the casts of that film, “Once Upon a Time in Hollywood” and “House of Gucci.”
The Screen Actors Guild introduced actor awards as the SAG Awards in 1995, which meant the honor did not exist when Pacino delivered some of his most acclaimed performances in “The Panic in Needle Park,” “The Godfather” trilogy, “Scarecrow,” “Serpico,” “Dog Day Afternoon,” “Scarface,” “Carlito’s Way,” “Scent of a Woman” and others. The awards were renamed last year.
“Like many actors, I have spent my life in awe and admiration of the force of nature that is Al Pacino,” SAG-AFTRA President Sean Astin said in a statement. “When you watch him perform, you are watching a student and a master. Al Pacino is an artist of extraordinary courage, intensity and heart whose work has always set an extraordinary standard of skill and talent. All this and he is absolutely fun to watch.”
In response to the honor, Pacino said in a statement, “I have been wondering and wandering most of my life, but with a script and my fellow actors I have always felt at home. It is this work and the actors associated with it that have been one of the greatest joys of my life.”
Recent recipients of the SAG-AFTRA Life Achievement Award include Harrison Ford, Jane Fonda, Barbra Streisand, Sally Field, Helen Mirren, Robert De Niro, Alan Alda and Morgan Freeman. The award was presented annually for more than three decades before the creation of the SAG Awards, with notables including Eddie Cantor, Stan Laurel, Bob Hope and Barbara Stanwyck. Pacino will become the 62nd recipient.
The Actor Awards presented by SAG-AFTRA will take place on Sunday, February 28, 2027 at the Shrine Auditorium and Exposition Hall in Los Angeles.
