Al Pacino: No Sense of a Woman

Al Pacino may have played a smooth-talking ladies man in Scent of a Woman, but in reality the erratic lifelong bachelor is more apt to send his female admirers fleeing in tears, we hear.

According to a West Coast spy, Pacino displayed his less-than-suave side last Friday when a comely redhead in a green dress sashayed up to the table where he and five friends were dining at Hollywood haunt Il Sole and asked to speak to the 65-year-old actor—alone.

We’re told the toothsome twenty-something was merely looking to give the Godfather star her phone number out of earshot of his dinner companions, but Pacino evidently divined something sinister in her approach. “I don’t speak to anyone privately! What do you want?” he thundered back at the stunned seductress, causing her to run out of the restaurant, weeping. Not yet satisfied with his fan’s humiliation, Pacino then barked at the hostess to call the police, claiming that the young woman had approached him “to propose marriage,” our source says.

“Al was extremely paranoid,” says our witness. “You’d think he’d been approached by a terrorist rather than a pretty girl. She didn’t say anything about marriage, she simply said ‘Hello’ and asked if she could speak to him away from his friends.”

Perhaps Pacino, who won an Oscar portraying the blind Lieutenant Colonel Frank Slade, has begun to lose his hearing after one too many Hoo-Has. But at least he stayed in character­—the actor, whose children by National Lampoon’s Vacation star Beverly D’Angelo and former acting teacher Jan Tarrant were all born out of wedlock, has a reputation in Tinseltown as a zealous foe of wedded bliss.

Another possible reason for Pacino’s outburst is loyalty to his rumored current girlfriend Rose McGowan, who more recently was attached to Men’s Health honcho David Zinczenko. But our Il Sole insider confides that Pacino’s romance with the much younger actress­—recently reported by Us Weekly—is a complete fabrication. “They both dined here on the same night, at separate tables and never a word was exchanged between them,” says the source. “I think Rose planted the item for publicity.”

Asked about the supposed relationship, McGowan’s rep, Leslie Sloane Zelnik, said, “I know nothing about it.” Pacino’s publicist, Pat Kingsley, did not return calls for comment.