Stephen Graham 'frightened' his childhood hero by going off script and launching himself at him during scene

Stephen Graham has revealed he once ‘frightened’ his acting hero Al Pacino after launching himself at him during filming.

The Scouse star appeared in Martin Scorsese’s The Irishman, where he was filming alongside Hollywood heavyweights Al Pacino and Robert De Niro - an experience he’s previously admitted ‘blew his mind’, due to how much he looked up to the star.

During an appearance on Soccer AM earlier this year, Graham said: “As a kid, my dad took me to the video shop, and we watched these three films, and from that moment on, I had posters of these people on my walls.

“So for me, a kid from a block of flats, to be in a scene with Robert De Niro and Al Pacino just blew my mind, and to be in that film that was directed by Martin Scorsese was a different experience.”

And it seems that the 50-year-old star was able to equally impress Pacino when the duo filmed a scene together in The Irishman.

In the scene, Graham’s character Anthony 'Tony Pro' Provenzano is in jail with Pacino’s character, Jimmy Hoffa, when the pair get into a disagreement.

Netflix

Opening up about the scene, Graham told Still Watching Netflix: “I’d already come up with an idea at home when I was reading through. I had a little idea to do something. I didn’t tell Marty, I didn’t Al. I told the cameraman and I asked the props department how many bowls of ice cream they had and they said, ‘loads’.

“And I knew it was going to be the last take, so I knew I had to get this in.

“So, he’s eating the ice cream really slowly and his last little bit, he took his last little mouthful, and he puts his spoon down in the bowl and he just kind of leans back.

Netflix

“As he did that I just leant across and I lashed his ice cream bowl right across the room and I went to jump across the table and I went, ‘You!’

“And he just went, ‘Whoa!’”

As Graham lunged across the table Scorsese shouted the cut, and a shocked - but seemingly impressed - Pacino told the legendary director: “Did you see that, Marty? The kid frightened me. He frightened me.”

He added: “That moment where I did smash his ice cream away, he really got frightened, you know what I mean? And we just kind of carried that into those little spats we had really.”