Al Pacino recently published a memoir about his impressive, decades-long career. Titled Sonny Boy, it details the actors’ dealings with a crooked accountant who mismanaged his savings, dropping him from $50 million, down to $0. This forced him to take on parts he wasn’t overly fond of, simply because he needed the money.
Al Pacino was warned about his accountant
In Sonny Boy, Al Pacino explains that he started receiving warnings about his accountant in 2011. The actor wrote that the man was, “at the time, a guy who had lots of celebrity clients,” but that he “was not to be trusted,” at least according to others he was friendly with.
However, he didn’t care. At the time, he was living a lifestyle that was “costing me a fortune.” Along with members of his staff, he was taking care of apartments and his two homes, including landscaping that cost him $400,000 a year; an office; and his young children. He was also the owner of 23 cellphones and 16 cars.
“I was spending three or four hundred thousand dollars a month, which is a lot of moolah,” he wrote, adding that he “wasn’t even signing my own checks.”
Getting suspicious
It was following a lavish family vacation in Europe that Al Pacino started getting suspicious about the man managing his finances. Like anyone would, he’d expected his bank account to be lower following the trip, but, instead, found he had more than before.
“I thought, It’s simple. It’s clear. I just know this,” he wrote. “Time stopped. I am f****d.”
According to Pacino, the accountant was eventually found guilty of running a Ponzi scheme and sentenced to seven and a half years in prison, which he’s since served. However, the damage was already done.
Al Pacino lost $50 million dollars
Despite catching on to his accountant’s shady dealings, Al Pacino was too late to stop the damage. As he soon found out, he’d lost all of his savings; he’d gone from having $50 million in the bank to $0.
“I was broke. I had $50 million, and then I had nothing. I had property, but I didn’t have any money,” he wrote, adding, “The kind of money I was spending and where it was going was just a crazy montage of loss.”
Pacino began to worry, partly because he wasn’t getting any younger, which meant there weren’t as many film roles available to him as there’d been when he was just starting out in the industry. This meant rebuilding his savings would be difficult.
“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,” he wrote. “The pendulum had swung, and I found it harder to find parts for myself.”
Taking on ‘some really bad’ film roles
How did Al Pacino go about rebuilding his savings? Through budgeting, selling one of his houses and taking on more jobs, both on-screen and off.
In terms of acting, Pacino revealed that he’d agreed to star in Australian television commercials. He also appeared in films that weren’t “very good,” solely because he needed money. This greatly differed from before, when he would do “films if I thought I related to the part and felt I could bring something,” like Oceans 13 (2007).
“Jack and Jill was the first movie I made after I lost my money,” he wrote. “To be honest, I did it because I didn’t have anything else. Adam Sandler wanted me, and they paid me a lot for it. […] I love Adam, he was wonderful to work with and has become a dear friend.
“I also ended up doing some really bad films that will go unmentioned, just for the cast, when my funds got low enough,” the actor continued. “And I sort of knew they were bad, but I convinced myself I could somehow get them up to being mediocre.”
Outside of film, Pacino also started charging for his usual college and university seminars, which he’d rarely done in the past. He also expanded the talks to other venues, which brought in additional revenue.
“Audiences came because I still had popularity,” he wrote.
Has Al Pacino learned anything from this experience?
Now in his 80s, Al Pacino is using what he learned from the events of the 2010s to ensure his remaining years aren’t subjected to the same stress. He also wants to make sure he leaves enough for his loved ones, saying he “has to think very seriously about my estate now. That means I have to get advice from people who are way smarter than me.”
He adds, “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.”
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It definitely sounds like he’ll be more careful with his finances from now on.