Al Pacino revealed he was almost kidnapped by a fan
In his new memoir, Sonny Boy, Al Pacino has shared anecdotes from throughout his decades long career. But the most incredible story of them all is the revelation that the 84-year-old was once nearly kidnapped by a female fan.
The story starts with Pacino and Gene Hackman’s brother, Richard Hackman, on the road together. He said that “somewhere in our cross-country journey,” they were getting drinks and were, admittedly, “a little drunk”. At the bar, he got talking to a woman there.
He said that he “got so drunk that I could not find my way home.” But a solution came up as he continued, “A woman said to me, ‘Oh, I’ll drive you home.’ And without a second thought, I got into her car with her.”
But even in his drunken stupor, the Oscar-winner began to feel uneasy and realised the car was heading in the wrong direction. He recalled, “As we drove, even in my daze, I could recognise that she was not taking me back to where I was staying. I said to her, ‘What is going on here?’ And she said straight out, ‘I’m kidnapping you.’”
That’s when things took a serious turn as the actor clocked the danger he was in. By this time, he was already “well-known” as The Godfather had been released, with his performance as Michael Corleone shooting him to global renown and making his name. But he said that the woman’s behaviour felt more worrying than just typical fan behaviour.
“I am from the South Bronx. When I see some crazy person trying to do something to me, I know how to escape,” he wrote. “I said, ‘No, you’re not. I’m getting out.’ She said, ‘No, no,’ and she kept driving.”
But Pacino was ready to take his life into his own hands. “I was a little drunk, but I was ready to leap from a moving car if I had to. This ain’t happening to me, man,” he said. Luckily, he didn’t have to resort to a duck and roll as, eventually, the woman agreed to drive him home.
Luckily, nothing more came of the incident, as the fan simply dropped him off and disappeared into the night. But for a moment there, Pacino, who famously played tough gangsters and hard men, was terrified. With plenty of other surprising, wild and interesting stories in his memoir, this one is certainly one of the most dramatic.
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