Last week, Al Pacino released his new memoir titled “Sonny Boy”, giving fans an inside look at his acting career. Readers also go to learn of some unheard-of scenarios Pacino had run into. One of them included a Ponzi scheme, that cost him millions of dollars.
The book details a duplicitous accountant who Pacino put his trust in. Upon Pacino’s return from a vacation, he discovered that the accountant had lost $50 million.
“And I thought, It’s simple. It’s clear. I just know this. Time stopped. I am f**ked…I was broke. I had $50 million, and then I had nothing. I had property, but I didn’t have any money. In this business, when you make 10 million dollars for a film, it’s not $10 million. Because after the lawyers, and the agents, and the publicist, and the government, it’s not $10 million, it’s $4.5 million in your pocket. But you’re living above that because you’re high on the hog. And that’s how you lose it.” He wrote.
He went on saying that he would receive “warnings that my accountant at the time, a guy who had lots of celebrity clients, was not to be trusted”, and in the end, it came back to haunt him.
Around this time, Adam Sandler was making a movie called “Jack and Jill” a film in which Sandler plays both a brother and sister. The film has been widely criticized as being the worst Sandler has ever been a part of. That said, Sandler asked Pacino to make a cameo in the movie and Pacino, reluctantly, accepted.
“‘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,” he wrote. “Adam Sandler wanted me, and they paid me a lot for it. So I went out and did it, and it helped. I love Adam, he was wonderful to work with and has become a dear friend. He also just happens to be a great actor and a hell of a guy.”
He says that during this time especially he found it difficult to find work and had to settle for whatever came his way. He said, “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 now 84-year-old Pacino now has had somewhat of a resurgence appearing in multiple films like ‘Hunters’, ‘House of Gucci’, and ‘Knox Goes Away’ in the last few years alone.
