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Al Pacino is ready to watch The Exorcist for the first time after starring in The Ritual: 'I'm strong enough'

Al Pacino plays an exorcist in his new movie, 'The Ritual,' but he's never seen the genre's defining film, 'The Exorcist,' directed by William Friedkin, whom he worked with on "Cruising."

"I didn't even see The Exorcist in my life," the Academy Award winner tells Entertainment Weekly alongside his Ritual costar Dan Stevens. In The Ritual, based on a true story, the actor plays Father Theophilus Riesinger, a Capuchin monk and experienced exorcist, who in 1928 is called upon to help a supposedly possessed woman named Anna Ecklund. The exorcism, overseen by Reverend Pastor Joseph Steiger (played by Stevens), was considered a success, and an account of the proceedings eventually made its way into a 1936 issue of Time magazine.

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