Pacino Recounts His Harrowing Experience With COVID

Al Pacino contracted COVID-19 during the pandemic, before a vaccine was available, and in his upcoming memoir, the actor reveals that he nearly died. Speaking about Sonny Boy, out next week, with People, Pacino recalls of his experience fighting the coronavirus, "I thought I experienced death. I might not have. I don't think I have, really. I know I made it." The 84-year-old says his assistant called paramedics after a nurse who was taking care of him said, "I don't feel a pulse on this guy." Pacino says he must have lost consciousness, "And when I opened my eyes, there were six paramedics in my living room. There was an ambulance outside the door, and two of my doctors in those space suits [like] on Mars. I looked around and I thought, 'What happened to me?'"

He adds that "everybody thought I was dead." But, in an interview with the New York Times, he says he "didn't see the white light or anything." The incident did, however, cause him to reflect on death and the afterlife: "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. 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?" (More Al Pacino stories.)