Oscar winning actor Al Pacino didn’t get into acting for the money.
So when the now-84-year-old started amassing millions from his roles in noteworthy films like “The Godfather” and “Scarface,” he didn’t keep a close eye on where it was going, he writes in his new memoir, “Sonny Boy.”
“I didn’t understand how money worked, any more than I understood how a career worked,” he writes. “It was a language I just didn’t speak.”
However, from paying his landscaper $400,000 a year to maintain a home he didn’t live in to unknowingly paying for 16 cars and 23 cellphones, his finances began to spiral out of control.
“The kind of money I was spending and where it was going was just a crazy montage of loss,” he says. “The door was wide open and people who I didn’t know were living off me.”
Pacino’s inexperience wasn’t the only factor contributing to his financial problems, though. He eventually learned his accountant had mismanaged his funds to the point of leaving him broke. “I had $50 million and then I had nothing,” he writes.
I had $50 million and then I had nothing.
By that point, Pacino was in his seventies and didn’t think he would be able to earn the kind of money from acting he did during the height of his career.
Before going broke, he preferred to play characters he could connect with and relate to regardless of how much money he stood to make from taking the role. But after his funds were depleted, he began taking whichever acting roles he could get.
“‘Jack and Jill’ was the first film I made after I lost my money,” Pacino says. “To be honest, I did it because I didn’t have anything else.” He also starred in “some really bad films that will go unmentioned, just for the cash.”
However, Pacino found a way to turn something he already loved doing into a money-making opportunity: hosting seminars.
Pacino remembered visiting colleges and universities in the early 2000s to talk to students about his career and favorite books and playwrights. Eventually, he decided to hold seminars for the public too and found that it paid well enough to get him through the month.
“So I started travelling around. And I found that they worked,” he writes. “Audiences came because I still had popularity.”
Ultimately, Pacino says he always trusted that he would be able to put himself back together and “never despaired” the financial rollercoaster he experienced.
“They have that expression, ‘You can’t look back,'” he writes. “Well, I look back and I love it. I love what I see. I love that I existed.”
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