Despite his mega success over the span of five decades, Al Pacino found himself financially strapped later in his career.
In his newly released memoir, “Sonny Boy,” the “Godfather” actor, 84, opened up about the financial pitfall he found himself in after being entangled with a corrupt accountant who mismanaged the star’s earnings for years.
In 2011, Pacino said, per Variety, that he started “to get warnings that my accountant at the time, a guy who had lots of celebrity clients, was not to be trusted.” The actor recalled paying “a ridiculous amount of money to rent some big fancy house in Beverly Hills,” plus footing the bill for an extravagant European trip with his family.
It wasn’t until he returned to the United States that he realized something wasn’t adding up when it came to his finances.
“I was broke. I had $50 million, and then I had nothing,” he continued. “I had property, but I didn’t have any money. In this business, when you make $10 million 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. It’s very strange, the way it happens. The more money you make, the less you have.”
“The kind of money I was spending and where it was going was just a crazy montage of loss,” he added. “The landscaper was getting $400,000 a year, and I don’t exaggerate these things. It just went on and on. Mind you, that was for landscaping at a house I didn’t even live in.”
“I wasn’t even signing my own checks — the accountant signed them and I just let them go by,” he added, per Us Weekly.
“I wasn’t looking and he didn’t tell me how much I had or where it was going,” he continued. “And I wasn’t keeping track of who got what. It was all about: Let’s keep this dumb actor going, and I was keeping track of who got what. I was all about: Let’s keep this dumb actor happy, just keep him working, and will reap.”
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According to Variety, Pacino didn’t realize he was broke until he was in his 70s.
“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. The pendulum had swung, and I found it harder to find parts for myself.”
The legendary actor was forced to evaluate his career and began taking roles he wouldn’t typically accept.
“‘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. 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.”
Additionally, Pacino sold two of his homes and began charging for seminars at various universities.
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“My seminars were another big find for me. In the past, I used to go to colleges all the time and talk to the kids there, just to get out there and perform for them, in a sense,” he wrote. “I’d tell them a little bit about my life and have them ask me questions. … I didn’t get paid for it. I just did it. Now that I was broke, I thought, ‘Why don’t we follow this up?’ There were more places I could go and do these seminars. Not necessarily universities. I knew there was a wider market for this. So I started traveling around. And I found that they worked. Audiences came because I still had popularity.”
Pacino’s former accountant was found guilty of running a Ponzi scheme and served seven and a half years in prison.
The actor has four children: a 1-year-old son, Roman, whom he welcomed with Noor Alfallah in June 2023; daughter Julie Marie, 34, with ex-girlfriend Jan Tarrant; and twins Anton and Olivia, 23, with ex Beverly D’Angelo.
