Al Pacino‘s ‘Sonny Boy’ is flooding media headlines as the autobiography reveals various details of the veteran actor’s life. The book describes the adventurous life of the actor which is no short of a movie itself.
Along with other things, Al Pacino has also revealed how he struggled to make money from various means at an old age. In one of the extracts, he recalls a time when despite being ‘The Godfather‘ star, he lost all his money when he was 70 years old. Here’s how Al Pacino dealt with being broke in his 70s.
Al Pacino Was Tricked By His Accountant
In his memoir ‘Sonny Boy’, Al Pacino confesses to having an extravagant spending problem. He was spending “a ridiculous amount of money to rent some big fancy house in Beverly Hills.” Thereafter, he took his entire family on a Europe trip. He flew his guests in “a gorgeous Gulfstream 550” and “rented out a whole floor of the Dorchester hotel in London.” However, he failed to see his accountant’s devious plans.
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Pacino wrote that he began to get warnings for his accountant from others around 2011. The unnamed accountant had a lot of celebrity accounts too, so Pacino overlooked the signs. However, after his Europe trip, he became suspicious when his balance showed no change. He wrote, “And I thought, It’s simple. It’s clear. I just know this. Time stopped. I am fucked.”
Pacino’s accountant mismanaged the actor’s funds by running a Ponzi scheme. He wrote, “I was broke. I had $50 million, and then I had nothing. I had property, but I didn’t have any money.” The accountant was sentenced to seven and a half years in prison for investment fraud and embezzlement. But Pacino was left with no penny to his name.
Al Pacino Had To Take Up Roles He Couldn’t Relate To Just For Money
With his account flushed, Al Pacino took whatever roles he could find. However, as a 70-year-old he could not find high-paying roles. He wrote, “I wasn’t a young buck, and I was not going to be making the kind of money from acting in films that I had made before. The big paydays that I was used to just weren’t coming around anymore.”
Therefore, he found other means for more capital inflow. Pacino decided to lift his commercial bans and shot a coffee advertisement. He asked to be paid for his seminars in colleges and universities. Moreover, he took roles to which he could not relate. One such instance was when Pacino starred in Adam Sandler’s 2011 comedy ‘Jack and Jill’.
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“‘Jack and Jill’ was the first film I made after I lost my money. To be honest, I did it because I didn’t have anything else,” Pacino wrote. “Adam Sandler wanted me, and they paid me a lot for it. So I went out and did it, and it helped.” Eventually, Pacino became good friends with Sandler.
Al Pacino’s autobiography ‘Sonny Boy’ was published on October 8, 2024, and is available for purchase.
