Al Pacino Shares Secrets From Life and Career in New Memoir, Including Near-Death Experience

In 2020, a COVID infection brought Al Pacino as close to dying as he has ever been.

“They said my pulse was gone. It was so — you’re here, you’re not,” he says. “I thought: Wow, you don’t even have your memories. You have nothing.”

At 84, the acclaimed actor and father of four is taking stock of his life with a new memoir, Sonny Boy, which chronicles everything from his upbringing in New York’s South Bronx to his career highlights to the birth of his youngest child, son Roman, last year.

“He’s learning things,” Al says of the toddler he’s coparenting with his ex Noor Alfallah. “And that has been a campaign for me to stick around a little longer if it’s possible.”

In his own childhood, Al’s single mother, Rose, nicknamed him “Sonny Boy” and took him to the movies, planting the seeds of his future as an actor. Rose saved her son from running wild in New York, but she suffered from depression and tried to kill herself when Al was 6. She died of an overdose when her son was 21 — a traumatic incident he believes was an accident.

“I’d like to give my mother the benefit of the doubt, that dignity, to be fair to her memory,” he says.

In his 20s, Al worked odd jobs and was frequently homeless as he studied acting. He met Martin Sheen in class. They became roommates and worked as janitors.

“I could tell he was one of the best people I’d ever know, all grace and humility,” Al says. “I loved him. I still do.”

Success arrived like a tsunami. Al won a Tony for his 1969 Broadway debut in a play that was seen by Francis Ford Coppola, who would offer Al The Godfather.

“For a director to offer you a role, over the phone … and this role of all the roles — that was a hundred-million-to-one shot,” Al says of the part that would make him world-famous — for better and for worse.

“Anonymity, sweet pea, the light of my life, my survival tool — that’s gone now,” he says. “You don’t appreciate it till you lose it.”

In his private life, the never married actor has known long romances with Jill Clayburgh, Diane Keaton and Beverly D’Angelo, but he came closest to marriage in the early 1980s with Apollo 13 actress Kathleen Quinlan.

“She knew what she wanted, and she got it, only it was with someone else,” he confesses. “I carried the hurt with me for years.”

Al suffered a different pain in his 70s when he realized his financial manager had been squandering his money. The actor was paying $400,000 a year on landscaping at a house he didn’t live in. He thought he had two cars, but he was financing 16!

The actor admits he “ended up doing some really bad films that will go unmentioned, just for the cash.”

Acting still inspires him, especially now that he is finally wise enough to play heady characters like King Lear.

“I’ve stayed away from it forever,” he says. “And I got older, and some of the things — not that they’re easier, but I understand them more.”