Taking home souvenirs from the set? Now that’s an offer Al Pacino can refuse.
The 84-year-old revealed that despite starring in some of the most critically acclaimed films over the past several decades, including “The Godfather” and “Scarface,” he doesn’t take home mementos from filming.
“I’ll probably lose them,” Pacino admitted to People in an interview published Saturday. “For a long while, I used to bop from one place to another. I always was a bit of a gypsy.”
The one thing the actor has kept? A homemade Oscar trophy that fans gifted him after the 1983 crime thriller “Scarface” was snubbed by the Academy Awards.
A group of fans came to see Pacino perform in a matinee show of David Mamet’s “American Buffalo” in San Francisco and brought along the thoughtful gift for the star.
“It was just around the time the awards were coming out, the Oscars were coming out and I didn’t get nominated,” recalled Pacino. “So the fans out there, they used to wait for me when a show was over. They all got together and gave me this huge Oscar. I thought, ‘My God.’ I still have it at my house.”
He added, “It was huge, proportionately huge compared to the real Oscar. You know what I’m saying? So I was stunned by that. I was very happy with that.”
By the time “Scarface” hit theaters, Pacino had already been nominated for five Academy Awards but had yet to win.
But he did take home the award for Best Actor at the 1993 Oscars for his performance in “Scent of a Woman,” beating out Clint Eastwood (“Unforgiven”), Robert Downey Jr. in “Chaplin,” Denzel Washington (“Malcolm X”) and Stephen Rea in “The Crying Game.”
Pacino made his film debut in 1969 with a small role in “Me, Natalie,” an independent film starring Patty Duke before landing the lead in the harrowing 1971 drama, “The Panic in Needle Park.”
These days, Pacino is reflecting on his life’s work in his new memoir “Sonny Boy: A Memoir.”
He also recently took a moment to recount a particularly scary moment while suffering from COVID-19.
Pacino said that during that time, he had a near-death experience where his heart stopped — and paramedics had to bring him back to life.
The “Godfather” actor told The New York Times in an interview published earlier this month that he was “sitting there in my house and I was gone” after falling unconscious while battling the virus, reportedly in 2020.
“I didn’t have a pulse,” he shared. “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.”
The Oscar winner had one of his employees bring over a nurse after he started to feel “unusually not good.”
Pacino’s symptoms included having a fever and being dehydrated before suddenly losing consciousness.
“I didn’t see the white light or anything,” he continued. “There’s nothing there. ‘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?”
Despite the life-altering experience, the “Dog Day Afternoon” alum finds solace in having his children, Julie, 34, 23-year-old twins Anton and Olivia and his son, Roman, born in 2023, as “consolation” and his extensive body of work as his legacy.
