There are plenty of wild stories about actors landing their big breaks, but few involve actually injuring a co-star. One of Michelle Pfeiffer’s earliest major roles came opposite Al Pacino in Scarface, and as she told SmartLess, she didn’t think she had a shot, at least not until she accidentally cut Pacino during her final audition.
Although Scarface director Brian De Palma was eager to hire her from day one, Pfeiffer said Pacino “didn’t really want me for the part.” Her first meeting with De Palma and the casting director went really well, but repeated callbacks took their toll. “Over the course of two months, I just [got] worse and worse and worse, because I’m just afraid. And by the end, I’m bad,” she explained. “[So] I don’t blame [Pacino]. He just was like, ‘[She’s] bad.’ And Brian finally comes to me and says, ‘You know, doll, it’s just not gonna work out. I’m like, ‘I know, man. I’m sorry.’ Because Brian really wanted me.“
Pfeiffer was naturally disappointed, but she confessed she was “so happy to be done with it.” However, after a month, she received a call to return for a screen test. “So I show up and I don’t even give a sh–, ’cause I know I’m not getting this part,” she said, adding that it resulted in her “best work of the film.“
The scene in question was the restaurant scene where she explodes on Pacino’s character. “I swipe the table of the dishes and glasses break, the dishes break, cut. There’s blood everywhere. They all run over to me, to see where I’ve cut myself. Well, didn’t cut me. I cut Al,” she said. “I thought, ‘Well, there goes that part.’ [But] actually I think that was the day [Pacino] was like, ‘Yeah, yeah. I think, yeah, she’s not bad.’“
Scarface put Michelle Pfeiffer on the map, so if she hadn’t accidentally cut Al Pacino during that screen test — and impressed him in the process — we might never have seen her shine in films like Dangerous Liaisons, Batman Returns, The Age of Innocence, and beyond.
Speaking of Scarface, Hollywood has been attempting to develop a remake for decades. Directors such as Antoine Fuqua, David Ayer, and Luca Guadagnino have all been attached to the project at various points, but it hasn’t come together. The last update had Danny Ramirez (Captain America: Brave New World) developing a new Scarface remake through his production company, Pinstripes.