Al Pacino said he had a near-death experience after a bout of COVID in 2020.
The 84-year-old Academy Award winner discussed the incident during a recent interview with People to promote his upcoming memoir, “Sonny Boy.”
“I thought I experienced death. I might not have. I don’t think I have, really. I know I made it,” Pacino told the outlet.
He continued. “I don’t think I died. Everybody thought I was dead. How could I be dead? If I was dead, I fainted,” he continued. “And when I opened my eyes, there were six paramedics in my living room. There was an ambulance outside the door, and two of my doctors in those space suits [like] on Mars. I looked around and I thought, ‘What happened to me?'”
“So I couldn’t have died, because how did all those people gather together, the ambulance in front of my house?” Pacino said.
The “Scarface” star said his assistant, Michael Quinn, realized what a serious situation Pacino was in and called the ambulance.
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“[Quinn] got the people coming, because the nurse that was taking care of me said, ‘I don’t feel a pulse on this guy,'” Pacino said. When asked if a brush with death changed his outlook on life, the actor replied, “No, not at all.”
Speaking about the same incident with The New York Times, Pacino said, “I didn’t see the white light or anything. There’s nothing there. As Hamlet says, ‘To be or not to be’; ‘The undiscovered country from whose bourn, no traveler returns.’ And he says two words: ‘No more.’ It was no more.”
“You’re gone. I’d never thought about it in my life. But you know actors: It sounds good to say I died once. What is it when there’s no more?”
Pacino made headlines last year for fathering a child with a 29-year-old woman, who later worked out an agreement with the actor to receive $30,000 per month in child support payments.
“It’s very special. It always has been. I’ve got many kids. But this is really special coming at this time,” he said of having another child in his 80s.
