Al Pacino Reveals the Real Reason He Turned Down the Role of Han Solo in Star Wars

Before “Hoo-ah,” there was almost Han Solo. In his 2024 memoir Sonny Boy, actor Al Pacino recounted how he was offered the role of Han Solo in Star Wars after his Oscar-nominated role in 1972’s The Godfather, but turned down playing the smuggling space pirate because he couldn’t “make anything out of” George Lucas’ script. In what would become a star-making role for Harrison Ford — the then-unknown who had played drag racer Bob Falfa in the Lucas-directed American Graffiti, produced by Pacino’s Godfather director Francis Ford Coppola — Star Wars became the highest-grossing film of all time when it opened in 1977.

“I said, ‘I think I’m in the mood to make Harrison Ford a career,’” Pacino joked to EW when asked about passing on Star Wars. The actor went on to recall his connection to New Hollywood’s “Movie Brats,” which included the likes of Steven Spielberg (Jaws), Martin Scorsese (Taxi Driver), and Coppola and Lucas, who co-founded The Godfather and American Graffiti production company American Zoetrope.

“They were in the late-’60s making this. They were real idealists coming into the ’70s with great films all over the globe. So it was a wonderful place that I actually saw, I went to the [Sentinel Building] and everything before I did Godfather with them,” Pacino said. “So I loved their work, but I was doing a show on Broadway at the time, and they handed me this script, and I thought, I don’t understand.”

That was the script for Star Wars, which included lines like this one delivered by Han Solo, cocky captain of the Millennium Falcon: “It’s the ship that made the Kessel Run in less than twelve parsecs. I’ve outrun Imperial starships. Not the local bulk cruisers, mind you, I’m talking about the big Corellian ships.”

“[I thought], I must be out of space myself,” Pacino joked. “But I looked at this thing and I sent it to Charlie Loughton, my friend and mentor, actually. I said, ‘What do you make of this?’ He was pretty wise and he said, ‘I don’t get it, Al. I dunno. I don’t get it.’ I said, ‘Well, I don’t either; what are we going to do? They offered me a fortune, but I don’t know. No, I can’t play something if I don’t speak the language.’”

Ford famously read for the role, which had auditioned or met with actors like John Travolta (Saturday Night Fever), Sylvester Stallone (Rocky), Nick Nolte (The Deep), Burt Reynolds (Deliverance), Christopher Walken (Annie Hall), Richard Dreyfuss (Jaws), Kurt Russell (The Computer Wore Tennis Shoes), and Pacino’s Godfather series co-stars James Caan and Robert De Niro.

“Anybody who was up-and-coming at that point was certainly brought in,” said Star Wars casting director Dianne Crittenden in a 2006 interview with Premiere Magazine. “There was one day we had in Nick Nolte, Richard Dreyfuss. John Travolta was one of the guys. And we talked about Robert De Niro. We actually didn’t really audition people [initially], we just brought them in to meet George.”

Pacino would play Michael Corleone in Cappola’s Godfather trilogy released between 1972 and 1990, while Ford’s Star Wars success would spawn multiple sequels as well as the starring role in Lucasfilm’s Indiana Jones franchise. Pacino went on to win an Oscar for his role in 1992’s Scent of a Woman, which also inspired the catchphrase “Hoo-ah!”