Say Hello To Al Pacino's Little Shrek Cell-Phone Case | GQ

Think of Al Pacino. What do you see in your mind’s eye? Probably, him in one of his two most famous roles: as The Godfather’s Michael Corleone, who morphs from clean-cut college graduate to cold, cunning mob boss; or as Scarface, a Miami crime baron with considerably less self-control and a penchant for burying his nose in snow drifts of cocaine. You probably don’t think of Pacino as he is now: an 84-year-old Hollywood greybeard. But we’re currently seeing a lot of 2024 Pacino, as he’s promoting his new memoir, Sonny Boy. In a recent viral interview with the BBC, the actor's musings on his long career are interrupted by a startling revelation: Al Pacino has a phone case plastered with pictures of Shrek.

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“Of all the things in the world I’d have thought Al Pacino would have on his phone cover,” the interviewer remarks, as Pacino unwraps his wired earbuds (themselves the stuff of legendary memes) from the cover in question, “I was not expecting…Shrek.” Pacino relishes this. He turns it into a little movie scene of its own. He gives the kind of brief, breathless laugh that you’d expect of an 84-year-old man, and replies: “Who would be expecting Shrek? Who?” He shows the case to the camera, looks directly down the lens, and whispers, “That’s mine.” Suddenly, bizarrely, it’s like Michael Corleone is transfixing us with a monologue about an animated ogre.

This is not the first time the case has been sighted. It did the rounds in April 2022, when a photo from a dinner with Jason Momoa included the case face-down on the table. Last October, Pacino was seen with the Shrek-ccessory when leaving the Four Seasons Hotel in Beverly Hills; this March, it was spotted again when he arrived for another meeting in LA. Where did it come from? When the BBC interviewer asks Pacino to explain “why you Shrek it”—which may mark the first time “Shrek” has been deployed as a verb; this interview is a viral bonanza—he says that his youngest daughter once asked him for his phone. She took it away, then when she came back “she had this on it”, he says, gesturing to the case. “She said, ‘It’s Shrek, dad!’ I said, ‘Shrek? Wow. Ok babe, I’ll hold onto it.’”

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His youngest daughter is Olivia Rose, who was born in 2001 and so was no older than 21 when she bestowed the Shrek case on him. Maybe it happened when she was younger and the case only surfaced publicly a few years after the fact. Regardless, it suits him. One of the key tenets of old-guy swag is that aged dudes can alchemize garish and even ugly clothes and accessories into things that are legitimately stylish, because garish, ugly stuff perfectly fits the vibe of being old and no longer caring about looking well put-together. On most people, an “If found, please return to my wife” novelty t-shirt is irredeemably cringe. On an 80-something retiree, it has an undeniable charm.

For Pacino, this quality is amped up by the fact he’s not just an old dude, but a newish dad. He has a son, Roman, who’s aged just 16 months, in fact. We don’t expect the parents of screaming infants to be that well put-together either—so Pacino, an 84-year-old father of a 16-month-old, has double license to indulge in kooky, out-there aesthetics. That’s what makes his Shrek phone case go so hard. That, and the fact that it marks a delightfully dizzying vibe shift for the man who was once—and maybe still is—the cinematic face of America’s underworld.

This story originally appeared in British GQ.