Although Al Pacino will always be synonymous with his groundbreaking performance in The godfather (1972), he was almost replaced by Francis Ford Coppola’s critically acclaimed mafia drama.

In his new memoir Sunny boywhich is now available, the Academy Award winner recalled that Paramount “wondered if I was the right actor” to play Michael Corleone in the feature film adaptation of Mario Puzo’s book and how he could ultimately prove himself.

“Paramount didn’t want me to play Michael Corleone,” he wrote in an excerpt shared by The Guardian. “They wanted Jack Nicholson. They wanted Robert Redford. They wanted Warren Beatty or Ryan O’Neal. In the book, Puzo referred to himself as ‘the sissy of the Corleone family’. He was supposed to be short, dark-haired, handsome in a delicate way, with no visible threat to anyone. That didn’t sound like the guys the studio wanted. But that didn’t mean it had to be me.

“However, it did mean that I would have to do a screening test for the role, which I had never done before, and would have to fly to the West Coast, which I just didn’t want to do. Doing. I didn’t care that it was The Godfather. I was a little scared of flying and I didn’t want to go to California. But my manager, Marty Bregman, said to me, ‘You get on the damn plane.’ He brought me a pint of whiskey so I could drink it on the flight, and I got there,” Pacino added.

While Pacino admittedly felt Coppola had “gone too far” in campaigning for him, the actor recalled the “unpleasant feeling” when he walked into the audition room and realized he wasn’t the only one being considered for the role.

“But here’s the secret: Francis wanted me. He wanted me and I knew it,” Pacino wrote. “And there’s nothing like when a director wants you. He also gave me a gift in the form of Diane Keaton. He had a few actors he auditioned for the role of Kay, but the fact that he wanted to pair me with Diane suggested that she had an advantage in the process. I knew she was doing well in her career and had appeared on Broadway in shows like Her And Play it again, Sam with Woody Allen. A few days before the screen test, I met Diane at Lincoln Center in New York City at a bar, and we just hit it off. She was easy to talk to and funny, and she thought I was funny too. I immediately felt like I had a friend and an ally.”

After a week and a half of filming, Paramount “again wondered if I was the right actor for the role,” Pacino recalled, adding, “Eventually Francis decided something had to be done. … At this point we were shooting The godfather for about a week and a half. And Francis said, ‘Well, you’re not going to make it.’

“I felt that in my stomach. That’s when I finally realized my job was on the line,” he wrote.

Although Pacino isn’t sure if Coppola did it “intentionally,” the director “advanced the shooting of the Italian restaurant scene, where the untested Michael comes to take revenge on Sollozzo and McCluskey.” That scene wasn’t supposed to be filmed until a few days later, but if something hadn’t happened that allowed me to show what I was capable of, there might not have been a later for me.

Luckily for Pacino, the scene showed exactly why Coppola cast him. “Then Francis showed the restaurant scene to the studio, and when they looked at it, there was something,” he wrote. “Because of that scene I just played, they kept me in the movie. So I wasn’t fired The godfather. I just kept doing what I was doing, what I had been thinking about on those lonely walks through Manhattan. I had a plan, a direction that I truly believed was the best choice for this character. And I was sure Francis felt the same way.”

The godfather Pacino earned his first Academy Award nomination for Best Supporting Actor, followed by a nod for Best Actor The Godfather Part II (1974).