Al Pacino has opened up about having to make drastic career changes at one point in his life after losing all his money in a Ponzi scheme.
The veteran actor shared in his recently published memoir Sonny Boy that he “had $50 million, and then I had nothing” due to a corrupt accountant, who eventually served time in prison for the scheme. Pacino said in 2011, he started “to get warnings that my accountant at the time, a guy who had lots of celebrity clients, was not to be trusted.”
Following the scheme, the Oscar-winning actor said he “was broke” after overspending and the accountant’s mismanaging of his finances.
“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 four and half in your pocket,” The Godfather star explained in his book. “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.”
He added, “The kind of money I was spending and where it was going was just a crazy montage of loss. … And I thought, It’s simple. It’s clear. I just know this. Time stopped. I am fucked.”
As a result, the actor had to change the way he went about choosing roles and start accepting anything that was offering a big paycheck. And that’s how he ended up appearing in Adam Sandler’s Jack and Jill.
“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.”
But the Scarface star said he continued to struggle to find roles even after the 2011 comedy, as he “wasn’t a young buck” anymore.
“I was not going to be making the kind of money from acting in films that I had made before,” Pacino said in his memoir. “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 actor also started to do commercials, which he previously avoided, and started charging to conduct seminars at colleges and universities to help bring in money.
Sonny Boy is currently out on bookshelves.
