Al Pacino has revealed he went broke several times after he first found fame.
The Hollywood veteran has opened up about his financial woes in a new memoir, Sonny Boy.
The book, released on 8 October, details how Al managed to overspend beyond his movie-star salary several times during his career. “When I finished making The Godfather, I was broke, not that I had ever had any money, but now I owed money,” the actor, 84, wrote. “My manager and agents got their cuts of my salary.”
The 1972 gangster movie became a mega hit, however, Al had only been paid $35,000 (£27,000) for his role in it.
And while he received much higher salaries for The Godfather: Part II and his 1983 blockbuster Scarface, the actor was unable to hold onto his wealth.
By the mid-1980s, Al said, he was again in financial straits. “I had about ninety grand in the bank and that was it,” he wrote.
Later, after starring in a string of hits including Sea of Love and The Godfather: Part III, Al discovered his accountant had been running an illegal “Ponzi” scheme and had siphoned off a large portion of his funds.
“I had fifty million dollars, and then I had nothing,” he wrote. “I had property but I didn’t have any money …The kind of money I was spending and where it was going was just a crazy montage of loss.”
