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The world could have lost a Hollywood icon due to COVID-19, but (thankfully) he survived! Al Pacino recently opened up about his near-death experience while fighting COVID-19 when the pandemic first began in a new interview with the New York Times.
In the interview, Pacino revealed, "They said my pulse was gone. It was so — you’re here, you’re not. I thought: Wow, you don’t even have your memories. You have nothing. Strange porridge."
Then, he went into detail, explaining that paramedics had to be called. The Godfather star shared, "What happened was, I felt not good — unusually not good. Then I had a fever, and I was getting dehydrated and all that. 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. 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. It was kind of shocking to open your eyes and see that. Everybody was around me, and they said: 'He’s back. He’s here.'"
As for what's on "the other side" in terms of what some people see after experiencing near-death, Pacino implied there is nothing. He said, "I didn’t see the white light or anything. 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. 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?"
Pacino's memoir, Sonny Boy, is set to be released on October 8th.