5 Occasions When Al Pacino and Robert De Niro Nearly Assumed Each Other's Roles

      Robert De Niro and Al Pacino, two of the greatest actors of our time, are long-time friends.

      They have also shared the screen in several films—such as The Godfather Part II, Righteous Kill, and The Irishman—and occasionally competed for similar roles.

      Here are five instances where the two old friends nearly took on each other's characters.

      Robert De Niro Could Have Portrayed Michael Corleone

      Al Pacino as Michael Corleone – Credit: Paramount

      In the outstanding biography De Niro: A Life, Sean Levy mentions that Francis Ford Coppola considered "numerous names for every pivotal role" in the 1972 film The Godfather, including both De Niro and Pacino. Although the character of Michael Corleone was awarded to Pacino, Coppola was impressed enough with De Niro to think about casting him as Michael's brother, Sonny, which eventually went to James Caan.

      So while Pacino and De Niro didn’t get to portray brothers, they did play father and son when De Niro took on the role of Vito Corleone in The Godfather Part II, representing the younger version of Marlon Brando’s character.

      Robert De Niro Replaced Al Pacino in The Gang That Couldn’t Shoot Straight

      Credit: MGM

      When Pacino was offered the role of Michael Corleone in The Godfather, he was almost unable to accept due to a prior commitment to the 1971 film adaptation of Jimmy Breslin's The Gang That Couldn’t Shoot Straight, as noted in a 2014 profile in The New Yorker. Producer Irwin Winkler refused to release Pacino, prompting him to appeal to playwright Israel Horovitz for help.

      "I went wild with Irwin, and he said, 'Find me a young Italian actor as talented as Pacino, and I’ll let him go,'" Horovitz recounted to The New Yorker. He said he introduced the producer to De Niro in a play, and De Niro was subsequently cast. Winkler offers a slightly different perspective in his book A Life in Movies, stating he became aware of Robert De Niro through his early independent films, The Wedding Party and Greetings, and after Pacino withdrew, “Bob De Niro came in, and we instantly wanted him to play Mario.”

      As a humorous side note: Harvey Keitel made a comment about The Gang That Couldn’t Shoot Straight while appearing alongside Pacino and De Niro at the Hollywood premiere of The Irishman. Director Martin Scorsese introduced the cast, which caused some confusion about their exit. Keitel quipped, "The gang that couldn’t shoot straight!"

      Al Pacino Could Have Starred in Taxi Driver

      Credit: Columbia Pictures

      According to Levy, in the early discussions surrounding the development of 1976's Taxi Driver, there was consideration for either Jeff Bridges or Al Pacino to take on the lead role that ultimately went to Robert De Niro. The film became one of the memorable collaborations between De Niro and Scorsese, and we never got to see Pacino don a mohawk.

      A year after Taxi Driver, Pacino portrayed a race car driver in Bobby Deerfield. In a 1979 interview with Lawrence Grobel, Pacino described the film as dealing with “avoiding — knowing when to duck, when to move, when to hide, when to roll with the punches. That’s what I consider my method of survival. I’ve gone through a lot of selfish experiences in my life. One day, I simply turned to myself and said, I am a selfish b——, and I don’t have to be.”