Al Pacino reveals he nearly died of Covid-19 – and gives his thoughts on the afterlife

By Rosa Rahimi, CNN

(CNN) — Al Pacino has revealed that he nearly died of Covid-19 in 2020, and shared his view on what happens after death.

In interviews with The New York Times and People magazine, the Oscar-winning actor recounted his experience contracting the virus and briefly having no pulse.

Pacino, 84, told the Times in a wide-ranging interview that he began to feel “unusually not good” and then developed a fever and was dehydrated. “I was sitting there in my house, and I was gone,” he said. “I didn’t have a pulse.”

“You’re here, you’re not. I thought: Wow, you don’t even have your memories. You have nothing. Strange porridge,” the “Scarface” actor said of his near-death experience.

Within minutes, an ambulance showed up at Pacino’s home and he regained consciousness with six paramedics and two doctors in his living room, he said.

“They had these outfits on that looked like they were from outer space or something,” he told the paper. “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.’”

In an interview with People, Pacino recounted coming back to consciousness with a sense of confusion. “I looked around and I thought, ‘What happened to me?’”

The movie veteran said he questions whether he actually died, despite “everybody” thinking he was dead. “I thought I experienced death. I might not have. I don’t think I have, really. I know I made it,” he said.

Pacino credited his “great assistant” for immediately contacting the paramedics when his nurse confirmed that he no longer had a pulse.

“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.

Asked if the health scare changed the way he lives his life, Pacino told People: “Not at all.”

But that isn’t to say the experience left the actor unchanged.

Pacino, who is currently preparing for a movie adaptation of Shakespeare’s “King Lear,” confirmed to The New York Times that the experience had a metaphysical effect.

“I didn’t see the white light or anything. There’s nothing there,” he explained. “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,” added Pacino.

“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 experience is detailed in his autobiography, “Sonny Boy,” to be published Tuesday.

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