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Keep your friends close, and your enemies closer.
~ Michael's most famous line

Michael Corleone is the main character of the late Mario Puzo's 1969 novel The Godfather, and the trilogy of film based upon it. He is the son of mob boss Vito Corleone who succeeds his father as head of the Corleone crime family. While he intends to make the Corleone family legitimate, his paranoia and obsession with revenge keep him in the criminal underworld, and ultimately destroy his family and his life.

In the film, he is portrayed by Al Pacino, who also portrayed Tony Montana in Scarface.

The Godfather[]

Michael was born in 1920 in New York City, the youngest son of crime boss Vito Corleone and his wife Carmela, brother to Sonny, Fredo, and Connie Corleone, and unofficially adoptive brother to Tom Hagen. As a young man, he wants nothing to do with the Corleone "family business", wanting instead to lead a more normal, American life. This causes conflict with his father, although Vito does not really want his favorite son to follow in his footsteps either, hopingthat he will go into politics instead.

Michael drops out of college, over his father's objections, to enlist in World War II. While fighting in the Pacific theatre, he is awarded the Naval Cross for bravery and profiled in Life Magazine. He receives an honorable discharge after being wounded in battle, and returns home in 1945. He starts dating a woman named Kay Adams, and brings her with his him to Connie's wedding to small-time criminal Carlo Rizzi.

When Vito is nearly killed by drug lord Virgil Sollozzo, Michael is forced into the criminal underworld he had run from for so long. He saves his father's life from Sollozzo's assassins, and reaffirms his loyalty to Vito and the family. He volunteers to kill Sollozzo and his minion, corrupt police captain Mark McCluskey, a plan that Sonny, now acting head of the family, reluctantly approves. Michael kills Sollozzo and McCluskey at a local Italian restaurant, igniting a mob war, and goes into hiding in Sicily, protected by family friend Don Tommassino.

In Sicily, Michael falls in love with and marries Apollonia Vitelli, the daughter of a local Mafia chieftain, but she is killed soon afterward in a car bombing planned by his corrupt guard Fabrizio. After hearing of Sonny's murder, Michael returns the U.S. and starts working for his father. He marries Kay after promising her that he will make the Corleone family completely legitimate within five years. They have two children, Anthony and Mary.

When Vito retires, he makes Michael his heir apparent, by passing the older but far less intelligent Fredo, which creates a rift between the two brothers. Michael and Vito plan to wipe out the other five Mafia families in New York, particularly that of Emilio Barzini, who masterminded Sonny's murder with help from Rizzi. Vito warns Michael that there is a traitor in the family who will reveal himself by setting up a meeting with Barzini in which Michael will be murdered. Soon afterward, Vito dies of a heart attack while playing with Anthony. At the funeral, Salvatore Tessio, Vito's longtime friend and caporegime, unintentionally reveals himself as the traitor by telling Michael that Barzini wants to meet with him.

On the day that Michael stands as godfather to Connie and Rizzi's son, he orders the murders of the heads of the five rival mob families, as well as that of Las Vegas gangster Moe Greene, who had refused to sell his casinos to Michael. Michael later confronts Rizzi about his betrayal, promising to spare his life if he leaves the family. When Michael sends a car to take Rizzi to the airport, however, caporegime Peter Clemenza garrotes Rizzi to death from the backseat.

Now the most powerful crime boss in the country, Michael prepares to move his family to Nevada. Connie furiously accuses him of having Rizzi killed, an accusation he denies when Kay asks if it is true. Moments later, however, Kay sees Clemenza kiss Michael's hand and call him "Don Corleone", and that realizes that not only did Michael have Rizzi killed, he has now become even more ruthless than his father.

The Godfather Part II[]

In 1958, Michael is working with one of his father's old associates, Hyman Roth, on a deal with the Cuban government that will realize his dream of making the Corleone family legitimate. Unbeknownst to him, however, Roth, an old friend of Moe Greene's, is using the deal as a setup to have him killed and avenge his friend.

On the night of Anthony's first communion, assassins working for Roth open fire on Michael's house, nearly killing him and Kay. Michael suspects that Roth is behind it and had help from someone in the Corleone Family, but pretends that their relationship is still good to find out what he is doing, and who the traitor in the family is.

He puts Hagen in charge of the family and goes to Cuba, where he and Roth are close to cementing a relationship with the corrupt Batista regime. He finds out that Fredo is the traitor when his brother drunkenly lets slip that he knows Roth's right-hand man Johnny Ola, whom he had claimed never to have met. He gives Fredo the kiss of death, and his terrified brother runs away. Moments later, Fidel Castro's rebel army takes over the country, driving out the Batista regime and ruining Michael's plans.

Meanwhile, Kay has an apparent miscarriage, but later tells Michael that she in fact had an abortion because she did not want to bring another child into Michael's violent, criminal world. An enraged Michael hits her in the face and banishes her from the family, taking custody of the children.

At the same time, Michael talks with Fredo, who admits that he had betrayed his brother because he believes he should have been made Don after Fredo's death, and resents being stepped over and underestimated. He then says that a Senate lawyer is Michael's upcoming Senate hearing on organized crime is in Roth's pocket. Michael disowns Fredo, and tells his personal assassin Al Neri that nothing is to happen to him while their mother is alive, implying that Neri is to kill him after she dies.

Michael testifies before the Senate and denies having anything to do with organized crime. He also undermines the testimony of the chief witness, Michael's traitorous caporegime Frank Pentangeli by flying in his brother Vincenzo, who makes an implicit threat against Pentangeli and his children; intimidated, Pentangeli recants, ruining the prosecution's case. Michael then arranges to have Roth killed publicly as he returns from Israel, while Hagen persuades Pentangeli to commit suicide so his family will be spared. Finally, he pretends to forgive Fredo at their mother's funeral as a ploy to get him to let his guard down; days later, he has Neri kill him. The official story of Fredo's death is that he drowned.

The Godfather Part III[]

In 1979, an aging Michael, wracked with guilt over his ruthless rise to power and having his own brother murdered, tries to redeem his reputation by going into business with the Vatican and setting up a charitable foundation named for his father and run by his daughter, Mary. He has an uncomfortable reunion with Kay, whom he has not seen in years; she tells him that both she and Anthony know the truth about Fredo's death, and that she "dreads" him. She is joined by Anthony, who says that he wants to drop out of law school and become an opera singer, something that Michael reluctantly accepts.

Michael's nephew, Sonny's illegitimate son Vincent Mancini-Corleone, endears himself to his uncle by saving his life from an attempted assassination orchestrated by Corleone Family caporegime Joey Zasa, who now runs the Corleone family's criminal enterprises. That night, Michael suffers a stroke; while he is incapacitated, Connie steps in and orders Vincent to kill Zasa, something Michael did not want. Michael is also troubled by Vincent's burgeoning romance with Mary, disapproving of first cousins marrying and fearing that her life will be put in danger.

Michael begins to rekindle his relationship with Kay, and takes her with him to Sicily to watch Anthony's operatic debut. While there, he meets with Cardinal Lamberto, frontrunner to become the new pope, and gives his first confession in 30 years, breaking down in tears as he admits to having Fredo murdered. Lamberto tells Michael that he deserves to suffer for his terrible sins, but that he can still be redeemed.

Lamberto is soon elected Pope John Paul I, but is murdered by the corrupt Archbishop Gilday, who is conspiring with banker Frederick Keinszig and mob bosses Licio Lucchesi and Oswaldo Altobello to swindle the Vatican and Michael, and were the real power behind Zasa. They also hire the assassin Mosca to murder Tomassino. At Tomassino's funeral, Michael vows before his old friend's casket to sin no more, and shortly afterward retires as Don, appointing Vincent as his successor on the condition that he give up his romance with Mary.

The night of Anthony's debut, Vincent carries out Michael's last order: to have Gilday, Keinzsig, and Lucchesi killed. Connie, meanwhile, kills Altobello by serving him a poisoned cannoli. After the show, while Mary confronts Michael about interfering in her relationship with Vincent, Mosca slips into the crowd and fires at Michael; the bullet passes through him and hits Mary, killing her. Michael screams in agony as he cradles his daughter's corpse. A broken man, he retires to Sicily, where dies of old age years later, completely alone, in the same courtyard where he had married Appollonia.

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