Al Pacino has exclusively revealed to the Daily Mail that he will be returning to the West End in a production of Oscar Wilde’s play, Salome, in 2016. This will mark a return to the London stage for the American actor for the first time in 30 years, although he has dipped his toe in the Wilde water before with productions of Salome in New York and Los Angeles.

Al Pacino and Jessica Chastain
Al Pacino and Jessica Chastain starred in Salome the film version together

The latter was filmed in 2006 as a cinema version that is currently on release, starring Jessica Chastain in the title role. This new British outing for Pacino will serve to be more than the rehearsed readings in the states and the star has promised: "We’ll be wearing clothes for London".

The 74-year-old, who has recently been honoured with the British Film Institute’s highest award, the BFI Fellowship, continued: "There will be make-up, sets costumes... and decadence. It will be a whole different thing to what we did in America."

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It will also feature a different actress to the film version, despite the fact that with Chastain, Pacino believes they got very lucky. "It was her [Chastain] first film," he said. "We lucked out on her but we need to discover a new actress to play Salome in London. "We’re all looking," he added, referring to the director, Robert Allan, and his long-time producer, Robert Fox.

Pacino has admitted he became "addicted" to Salome after seeing it performed in London with Steven Berkoff in the lead.

Addicted and capable of bringing his own character, Herod, very much to life as the Guardian’s Mike McCahill described of Pacino’s filmed performance. "Pacino’s vulgar, ethnically indeterminate Herod furnishes this banquet with easily digested ham: if he can’t quite bring all of Wilde’s often florid imagery into focus, he’s given it a good shout - literally so, in places."

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Salome was originally a French tragedy written by Oscar Wilde in 1891 and was published in English three years later.

The play tells, in one act, the Biblical story of Salome, stepdaughter of Herod Antipas who, to her stepfather’s dismay but to delight of her mother Herodias, requests the head of John the Baptist on a silver platter as a reward for dancing the dance of the seven veils.