A Twitter poll went viral over the weekend, attracting 270,000 responses to an extremely important question: Was Al Pacino or Robert De Niro hotter as a young man?
Both actors were in The Godfather Part II, and Heat.
Social media users have paired the two film legends together in a purely superficial contest which became a heated debate.
Here’s everything you need to know.
What have the actors starred in together?
Both actors started in the film industry during the late 1960s and early 1970s.
They co-starred in 1974’s sequel The Godfather Part II, but shared no screen time.
In 1995’s Heat, both reunited, with Pacino playing a police officer and De Niro playing a professional criminal.
What were the results of the poll?
At a wedding and having a big debate rn. Please vote. Who was hotter?
— Ashley Reese (@offbeatorbit) May 14, 2023
On Saturday, writer Ashley Reese went viral on Twitter when she was at a wedding, and then asked her followers to rate who was more attractive as a young man, Al Pacino, aged 83, or Robert De Niro, aged 79.
“At a wedding and having a big debate rn. Please vote,” Reese wrote in her post. “Who was hotter?”
Before the poll closed on Sunday, 277,372 people had voted.
Reese herself seemed to be on Team Pacino, as she rhetorically asked whether Twitter users had seen his 1975 film Dog Day Afternoon.
Her poll caught the attention of media outlets, including TMZ and Vanity Fair, who shared a screenshot of her Twitter post on Instagram and even celebrities such as Mindy Kaling got involved.
“Oh damn,” Kaling wrote, perhaps expressing frustration at the difficult choice.
Astoundingly, by the time the poll closed, Pacino and De Niro received an equal amount of votes.
One person wrote: “Young De Niro had a certain je ne sais quoi. Rugged yet graceful. This is the working man’s choice.”
Referencing a video montage of young Pacino, another said: “This is literally the most beautiful man I’ve ever seen in my life sorry”.
“This 50/50 tie is incredible,” Reese wrote after the final tallies were counted. “You’re really a yung Pacino or a yung di Nero.”
“More people voted in this poll than some local elections,” she added in another post within the thread.
On Monday, she wrote on Twitter, “I’m glad everyone had fun” and referenced the poll as “the year’s most important election”.
