Al Pacino to get lifetime achievement award from the Screen Actors Guild
[October 16, 2026]
By ANDREW DALTON
LOS ANGELES (AP) — Al Pacino has been named the next recipient of the
SAG-AFTRA Life Achievement Award.
The 86-year-old star of “Dog Day Afternoon,” “Scent of a Woman” and a
trilogy of “Godfather” films is the 62nd actor to receive the highest
honor handed out by the Screen Actors Guild -American Federation of
Television and Radio Artists.
“I wondered and wandered most of my life but have always felt at home
with a script and my fellow actors. It’s the work and the actors along
the way that have been among the greatest joys of my life,” Pacino said
in a statement Thursday. “It’s an honor to be recognized by SAG-AFTRA in
celebrating the journey.”
He’ll pick up the prize on Feb. 28 at the 33rd annual Actor Awards at
the Shrine Auditorium in Los Angeles. The show will stream live on
Netflix.
The award also honors humanitarian work, and the guild cited Pacino's
charitable efforts for disaster relief, fighting hunger and poverty and
his support for local theater companies, including the Shakespeare
Center of Los Angeles.
The native New Yorker was a young actor best known for his stage work
when director Francis Ford Coppola tapped him to play Michael Corleone
in 1972's “The Godfather” against the wishes of a studio that wanted an
established star in the coveted part.
He would be nominated for an Oscar for the role and become regarded as
one of the finest actors of his generation. He got annual Academy Award
nominations for the next three years, for “Serpico,” “The Godfather Part
II” and “Dog Day Afternoon.” He would not win until he took best actor
for “Scent of a Woman” in 1993, a year when he was also nominated for
supporting actor for “Glengarry Glen Ross.” He’s been nominated nine
times overall, most recently in 2020 for “The Irishman.”
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Honoree Al Pacino appears at the American Film Institute Life
Achievement Award event in Los Angeles on June 7, 2007. (AP
Photo/Matt Sayles, File)
 Pacino has also won two competitive
Actor Awards from SAG-AFTRA, two Emmys, four Golden Globes and the
Globes’ lifetime achievement honor, the Cecil B. DeMille Award.
“I have spent my life in awe and appreciation 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 witnessing a student
and a master. Al Pacino is an artist of extraordinary courage,
intensity and heart whose work has always set an exceptional
standard of skill and talent. All of that and he’s just plain fun to
watch.”
The SAG-AFTRA Life Achievement Award dates to 1962. Previous winners
include Barbara Stanwyck, James Stewart, Pearl Bailey, Frank
Sinatra, James Cagney, Katharine Hepburn, Audrey Hepburn, Paul
Newman, James Earl Jones, Jane Fonda and Harrison Ford.
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