At 84 years old, Al Pacino is a living legend at this point — and as he revealed in a recent interview, we came pretty close to losing him for good a few years ago.
In conversation with the New York Times around his upcoming memoir Sonny Boy, Al revealed that he came very close to dying from a bad case of COVID-19 back in 2020.
He explained that, at the time, he had to fetch a nurse after coming down with a fever and becoming dehydrated. “I was sitting there in my house, and I was gone,” Al recalled. “Like that. I didn’t have a pulse.”
“In a matter of minutes they were there — the ambulance in front of my house. I had about six paramedics in that living room, and there were two doctors, and they had these outfits on that looked like they were from outer space or something.”
When he came to, Al told the paper of record that he found it “shocking” to see medical professionals surrounding him. “Everybody was around me, and they said: ‘He’s back. He’s here,'” he recalled.
He also explained what the experience of literally almost dying felt like — or, didn’t feel like: “There’s nothing there. As Hamlet says, ‘To be or not to be’; ‘The undiscovered country from whose bourn, no traveler returns.’ And he says two words: ‘No more.’”
“It was no more,” Al continued. “You’re gone. I’d never thought about it in my life. But you know actors: It sounds good to say I died once. What is it when there’s no more?”
Wow. Heavy stuff! You can read the rest of the interview here. Sonny Boy hits bookshelves on Oct. 15.
