Al Pacino reacts in the Oscars photo room at the 96th Academy Awards in Hollywood, Los Angeles, California, US, on March 10.
Credit: Reuters Photo
Los Angeles: Veteran actor Al Pacino thought he "experienced death" after he fainted while ill with Covid-19 during the pandemic in 2020.
The 84-year-old, star of films such as The Godfather trilogy, Scarface, and Heat, said he remembered a nurse say that he didn't have a pulse at one point of time. Pacino, who is looking forward to his upcoming memoir Sonny Boy, said his "great assistant" Michael Quinn immediately took action and contacted the paramedics.
"He got the people coming, because the nurse that was taking care of me said, 'I don't feel a pulse on this guy.'
"So I couldn't have died, because how did all those people gather together, the ambulance in front of my house. I thought I experienced death. I might not have. I don't think I have, really. I know I made it," he told People magazine in an interview.
The multiple award winner said while everybody thought he was dead, he didn't think he had really died.
"How could I be dead? If I was dead, I fainted. 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?'" Pacino said.
"It was gone. As Shakespeare in Hamlet says, 'No more. To be, or not to be.' And then he says, 'No more'. And it's no more. Well, it's not. I don't know, who knows?" he added.
Asked if his health scare changed the way he now lives his life, Pacino said: "Not at all." The actor will next be seen in Johnny Depp's directorial Modi - Three Days on the Wing of Madness, set for a December 5 release.