Al Pacino says he was ‘dancing on the inside’ to Eminem’s Oscars performance

Rapper performed his track 17 years after it won Best Original Song

Al Pacino has praised Eminem’s surprise performance of “Lose Yourself” at the 2020 Academy Awards.

The actor, who attended the ceremony after being nominated for Best Supporting Actor for his performance in Martin Scorsese’s The Irishman, told Extra TV that he brought his three children along for the show.

“I love Eminem,” he said. “I happened to be standing up at the back... I saw Eminem and I just stopped and I looked at him. Yeah, I guess I was [dancing] on the inside.”

Eminem’s performance came 17 years after “Lose Yourself”, which featured in his film 8 Mile, won Best Original Song at the Academy Awards in 2003.

Explaining his appearance, the rapper said: “I kinda figured mahybe since I didn’t get a chance to do it at the time, maybe it would be cool.

“Back then, I never even thought that I had a chance to win, and we had just performed ‘Lose Yourself’ on the Grammys with the Roots a couple of weeks before... so we didn’t think it was a good idea.”

He added: “Back at that time, the younger me didn’t really feel like a show like that would understand me. But then when I found out I won, ‘That’s crazy!’

“That to me shows how authentic and real that award is – when you don’t show up and you still win,” he said. “That makes it very real to me.”

Al Pacino’s latest project, Hunters, has received mixed to negative reviews in comparison to The Irishman.

The Independent said the Amazon Prime series, which follows a group of Nazi hunters, includes a “high percentage” of dud jokes, and characters that have “none of the heart and cool that made Tarantino’s Inglourious Basterds oddly likeable”.