In his memoirs Sonny’s boyAl Pacino writes that he was forced to make a dramatic career change after losing all his money to a corrupt accountant who eventually served seven and a half years in prison for running a Ponzi scheme. This man allegedly mismanaged the Oscar winner’s funds, taking Pacino’s savings from $50 million to zero.
According to the star, it was in 2011 that he “began to receive warnings that my accountant at the time, who had many famous clients, was not reliable.” The actor was already paying “an insane amount of money to rent a luxury mansion in Beverly Hills,” and then took his entire family and other guests on a trip to Europe” in a gorgeous Gulfstream 550″ and He rented “an entire floor. The Dorchester Hotel in London”.
When Pacino returned to his home in Hollywood, he became suspicious when he realized that his finances had not changed much despite spending so much on vacations. “And I thought: it’s simple. It is clear. I only know this. Time has stopped. I’m scared,” he writes.
“I was broken. I had 50 million dollars and then suddenly I had nothing left. I had property, but no money,” recalls Pacino when he finally looked at his finances. “In this industry, when you make $10 million for a movie, it’s not $10 million. Because after the lawyers, the agents, the publicist and the government, it is not 10 million dollars, it is 4.5 million in your pocket. But you are living beyond your means because you are addicted to luxury. And that’s how you lose everything. It’s very strange how it happens. The more money you make, the less you have.”
“The amount of money I was spending and the way I was spending it was crazy, all to throw away,” he says. “The landscaper made $400,000 a year, and I’m not exaggerating. Mind you, it was your backyard that I didn’t even live in.”
Pacino was in his 70s when he found out he was broke: “I wasn’t a boy and I wasn’t going to make as much money acting in the movies I had done before. The big payouts I was used to were no longer coming. The situation had changed and it was more difficult for me to “find roles”.
Previously Pacino made films “if I thought I identified with the part and felt I could bring something”. Examples that fit this professional view are Ocean 13 e 88 minuteseven if the final title was a “disaster”, according to the actor. But when Pacino went bankrupt, he had to abandon any principles of his career and start taking whatever role brought him enough money. That’s why he agreed to star in the infamous Jack and Jill with Adam Sandler and also started doing commercials. For example, he shot the coffee commercial with director Barry Levinson.
“Jack and Jill it was the first film I made after I lost my money. To be honest, I did it because I had nothing else,” Pacino wrote. “Adam Sandler wanted me and they paid me a lot. So I did it, and it helped me. I love Adam, he’s been great to work with and he’s a dear friend.”
Pacino also sold one of his two homes and began charging fees to give seminars and lectures at colleges and universities, things he hadn’t asked for money for before: “The seminars were another great discovery for me. In the past, I would always go to the college and talk to the kids, just to go out and perform for them, in a way. I told them a little about my life, they asked me questions. …I wasn’t getting paid for it. But now that I was broke, I thought, “Why don’t you continue doing this?” There were so many places I could go and give these workshops. Universities are not necessary. I knew there was a bigger market for this kind of thing. So I started traveling. And I found that they worked. The public came because I was still very popular.”
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