IT IS strange to think of Al Pacino in Dublin. He should always be in New York. Or perhaps Miami, for his holidays. Or even Havana. But Dublin, no. Nevertheless, Pacino will arrive here on Wednesday for something like a 48-hour visit. He is receiving an honorary patronage of the University Philosophical Society, a debating club at Trinity College Dublin, where he will talk for 30 minutes, and take questions from the floor. Pacino will go to dinner in the Provost's house. The officers of the Phil will be wearing black tie (not the girls, obviously). It will be interesting to see if Pacino does the same. He has been asked to wear formal dress.

How Pacino, the man whose velvet eyes have told the world about America, agreed to come to Dublin is a story in itself, and a tribute to student ambition.

The Phil has a long reach these days, conferring honorary patronage not only on the usual suspects such as Bob Geldof and our Taoiseach ("Bertie was a bit more pushed for time, so he didn't go to dinner" says the Phil's president, Daire Hickey), but also on Senator John McCain and Oliver Stone.

Quite why the Phil has hit the showbusiness circuit with such force in its search for guests is hard to explain. The society is sponsored by AIB, which surely has money to burn. According to Hickey: "The invitation came at a good time."

The students knew that Pacino has "a huge interest in Oscar Wilde, " who was an undergraduate at Trinity. Earlier this year, the actor starred in Wilde's Salome on Broadway, as Herod, alongside Dianne Wiest and Marisa Tomei. It was a performance which received mixed reviews. The LA Times said that Pacino's version of Herod seemed to be channelling Jerry Lewis.

The Guardian thought Pacino was camp in the play, and wearing "enough bling to halt a drive-by".

However, Pacino is now making a documentary on Wilde . . . called Salomaybe? . . .

a follow-up on his documentary about putting on Richard III, which was called Looking For Richard. For this reason alone, presumably, an invitation to Dublin was fortuitous. Pacino will not be appearing on The Late Late Show, as far as anyone knows, and is uninterested in any publicity which has not been generated by the Phil itself.

Early last summer, the students sent Pacino a letter. "We're old-fashioned, " says Hickey. "I'm not telling you what was in it. It was a sealed, secret letter. Each letter is crafted, it's a skill in itself and we do a lot of research."

This old-fashioned letter, sent to Pacino's agents, was so effective that it provoked a remarkably swift response. "Last June, I was at a party, " says Hickey. "And being the sad bastard that I am, I checked my Blackberry and saw that I had an email from Pat Kingsley. I knew that she was one of Hollywood's most feared publicists. (Pat Kingsley used to be Tom Cruise's publicist, and his career has plummeted since he fired her. ) She said that Mr Pacino was very interested."

It was an uncontroversial result.

As Hickey says: "Everyone is AOK with Al Pacino." Despite the fact that his heyday was in the 1970s, Pacino, at the age of 66, is still one of the few undisputed stars left in the US. He has made a career out of playing small, furious men.

Unfortunately for us all, the small furious men have degenerated from the majesty and corruption of Michael Corleone in The Godfather and The Godfather: Part II to the pettyfogging lunacy of Lieutenant Colonel Frank Slade in Scent Of A Woman, for which Pacino won his only Oscar in 1992 (he has been nominated eight times). Even with wonderful performances in Glengarry Glen Ross (1992), as the appalling Roy Cohn in Angels In America (made for TV, 2003) andDonnie Brasco (1997, his sadness to the fore at last), Al Pacino can truly say, with Norma Desmond, that it is the pictures that have got small. Next year, he is due to appear in Ocean's Thirteen, Steve Soderbergh's risible heist series.

Pacino has turned down some of the biggest parts in the history of modern cinema . . . Hans Solo in Star Wars, Captain Willard in Apocalypse Now, Harry Parker in Angel Heart. There are many more on the list. The 1980s were a series of bad calls on his career. Cruising and Author! Author!

were critical and box-office disasters, hard to take after the 1970s, when Pacino made the best films of his life . . . The Godfather (1972), Serpico (1973, okay, not so great), Dog Day Afternoon (1975), The Godfather: Part II (1974).

An actor, even an actor of genius, is not in control. He can only keep moving.

After the disaster of Hugh Hudson's film Revolution (1985), Pacino did not make a film for five years. In Hollywood terms, this was career suicide, although in fact Pacino returned to the stage, starring in a New York production of Julius Caesar directed by the legendary Joe Papp. To the film industry, this looked like a heavyweight fighter taking up needlework.

"That is the way theatre's perceived, unfortunately, " Pacino said at the time.

He only emerged from his exile from Hollywood in 1989 to make Sea Of Love with Ellen Barkin. He has tried to maintain both a film and a theatrical career, using one to fund and fuel the other. He was, after all, a pupil of the Lee Strasberg Actors' Studio. He later appeared with Lee Strasberg himself, who played the ailing Hyman Roth in The Godfather: Part II, becoming a supporting player to his onetime star pupil. Pacino's links to the Actors' Studio endure to this day. Salome was directed by one of its teachers, Estelle Parsons.

Pacino had only had small parts in two films . . . he was a junkie in Panic In Needle Park . . . before being cast as Michael Corleone. It is one of the greatest screen performances of all time. Michael's steady hand lighting the cigarette of his reluctant accomplice, the terrified Enzio, after foiling the murder attempt on his father, and his face when he realises that his brother Fredo has betrayed him (PartII) are only moments in an unrelenting masterpiece. David Thomson, author of The Biographical Dictionary of Film, and never an easy man to please, calls Pacino "our greatest actor now".

The fact that he is so revered by what must be his third generation of film fans shows how great movies can endure. Perhaps his visit to the Phil shows not only an actor's desire for diversion, but also an ageing giant's weakness for respectability.

C.V.

Born: 25 April, 1940

Parents: Salvatore Pacino and Rose Gerard. Both said to have had familiy connections to the Corleone family in Sicily.

Divorced when Alfredo was two.

Education: High-school dropout. The Actors' Studio

Married: Never

Children: Julie Marie with Jan Tarrant.

Anton and Olivia with Beverly D'Angelo

In the news because: He is due to receive an honorary patronage from the University Philosophical Society at TCD on Wednesday