Al Pacino he lost all his money for one pyramid scam into which a corrupt accountant dragged him. He realized this when he arrived from vacation with his family. “I was broke. I thought I had $50 million, and all of a sudden I had nothing. I had assets, but I had no money.” This is how he was forced to work on a title with which he did not identify. He did it because I was 70 years old,I was broke and they no longer paid him like before, as he says in his memoir ‘Sonny Boy’ (Dome).
But soon after, in 2011, he discovered that his accountant had lured him into some sort of pyramid scheme and he was broke again. He admits he had no control over his money and was paying $400,000 a year “to take care of a house he didn’t even live in.” But he says he never gave up and started taking jobs just for the money. The worst was not the ruin but the physical decline.
The first title (and not the only one) in which he participated for economic reasons was “Jack and his twin” (2011), by Adam Sandler. “It’s the first film I made after losing my money. To be honest, I did it because I had nothing else“, he said himself. In fact, he remembers that They paid dearly for it. And I don’t just gain materially. Personally too, because he met Adam. “He was wonderful to work with and became a dear friend. He also happens to be a great actor and a great guy,” he adds.
Pacino ended up broke. “I looked at the box and it was empty.“, says the protagonist of ‘Dog Day Afternoon’ (1975), who recognizes that it is thanks to Keaton that was able to recover from this crisis when he forced him to return to the movies. “He said, ‘What are you going to do, mope around all day? Are you going to go back to the Village and live in a room and make your little works of art? Is that what you think you’re going to do? what are you going to do? Come on, Al, you’re not living in the 60s anymore. Who do you think you are, there’s no going back. you have been rich for too long“Keaton is one of his partners who more discussions in the bookas well as his first serious girlfriend, Jill Clayburghwith whom he had a five-year relationship early in his career.
The worst was not the ruin but the physical decline. “At almost eighty years old, I discovered that you had to take care of yourself,” recalls the actor, whose excesses began to take their toll. “All the abuse in the body, the substances you introduce in your youth come back to bother you.” And covid also arrived. “I actually died once,” says Al Pacino, who caught Covid-19 early in the pandemic and got so bad that he claims to have experienced death. “I came back and I can say there was nothing there.”
