Al Pacino is opening up about suffering a life-threatening experience during the COVID-19 pandemic.
In a new interview with The New York Times ahead of the release of his upcoming memoir, “Sonny Boy,” Pacino revealed that he had a close call with death after falling ill with a “bad” case of COVID-19 in 2020.
Noting that the health scare happened before COVID vaccines became available, the actor shared that his health took a turn for the worse after he temporarily lost his pulse.
The “Godfather” legend, 84, explained that the incident started after he felt “unusually not good,” before eventually catching a fever and becoming severely dehydrated.
“So, I got someone to get me a nurse to hydrate me. I was sitting there in my house, and I was gone. Like that. I didn’t have a pulse,” he said. “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 “Scarface” alum called the ordeal “shocking,” noting that when he regained consciousness he was surrounded by a barrage of people.
“Everybody was around me, and they said, ‘He’s back. He’s here,’” he added in the interview published Saturday.
Speaking with People about the health scare, the Oscar winner credited his “great assistant Michael Quinn” for immediately contacting the paramedics during the incident.
“He got the people coming, because the nurse that was taking care of me said, ‘I don’t feel a pulse on this guy,’” Pacino recalled.
The “Heat” alum told People he doesn’t think he actually died, but “everybody thought I was dead.”
“How could I be dead? If I was dead, I fainted,” he added.
Elsewhere in the interview with the Times, Pacino was asked if the terrifying incident had any “metaphysical ripples,” to which he replied: “It actually did. I didn’t see the white light or anything. There’s nothing there.”
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