Francis Ford Coppola confronted the star about his performance in an upmarket Manhattan restaurant, telling him to look back on his acting so far.

In his new memoir 'Sonny Boy', Al Pacino reflected on his breakthrough role in Francis Ford Coppola's 'The Godfather' (1972).

They had been filming for about a week and a half and word got around that Paramount was unhappy with Pacino's performance, the actor recalls in his memoir, "Sonny Boy."

Pacino also recalls how he initially struggled on the iconic Francis Ford Coppola film and even received some pressure from the director.

Al Pacino could never have predicted that his performance in The Godfather would be his breakout role. Pacino, who recalls receiving the role of Michael Corleone directly from director Francis Ford Coppola over the phone as “a hundered-million-to-one-shot” in his memoir Sonny Boy,

In the mid 1980s, Al Pacino was dating Diane Keaton when he discovered that he was broke. The Godfather had been a huge critical and commercial success, but it wasn’t a big payday for Pacino, who reportedly was only paid $US35,000 ($52,000) on the film.

While he went on to draw rave reviews and earn an Oscar nomination for his role in the film, Pacino recalled the negative response to his work after the first few scenes had been filmed. In an extract from his new memoir Sonny Boy published in The Guardian,

The Godfather trilogy would have turned out differently if another actor was cast as a main character in the film.