(CNN)- Al Pacino revealed he almost died from COVID-19 in 2020, and shared his opinion on what happens after death.
in interview with the new York Times and magazine PeopleThe Oscar-winning actor recalled his experience of getting infected with the virus and being left without a pulse for some time.
Pacino, 84, told The New York Times in a wide-ranging interview that he began feeling “abnormally ill” and then developed a fever and became dehydrated. “I was sitting at home and was gone,” he said. “He had no pulse.”
“You are here, you are not. I thought: Wow, you don’t even have your memories. You have nothing,” the “Scarface” actor said of his near-death experience.
A few minutes later, an ambulance arrived at Pacino’s home and, according to what he said, he woke up in his living room with six paramedics and two doctors at his side.
“They were wearing suits that looked like they came from outer space or something,” he told the newspaper. “It was shocking to open your eyes and see him. Everyone was around me and they were like, ‘He’s back. It’s here.'”
In an interview with People, Pacino explained that he came in with a sense of confusion. “I looked around and thought, ‘What happened to me?’
The film veteran said he questions whether he really died, even though “everyone” thought he did. “I thought I had experienced death. Probably not. Honestly, I don’t think I did. “I know I got over it,” he said.
Pacino credited his “great assistant” in that he immediately contacted paramedics when the nurse confirmed he no longer had a pulse.
Pacino recalled, “They had people coming up to them, because the nurse who was taking care of me said, ‘I can’t feel this guy’s pulse.’
Asked if the health scare has changed the way he lives his life, Pacino told People: “Absolutely not.”
But that doesn’t mean the experience has left the actor unchanged.
Pacino, who is currently preparing for the film adaptation of Shakespeare’s “King Lear,” confirmed to The New York Times that the experience had a spiritual impact.
“I didn’t see white lights or anything. There’s nothing there,” he explained. “As Hamlet says: ‘To be or not to be’; ‘That unknown country from whose borders no traveler returns.’ And he says two words: ‘No more’. There was nothing else,” Pacino said.
“There you are. I never thought about it in my life. But you know actors: it feels good to say I died once. What is it when there’s nothing else?”
Pacino’s experience is detailed in his autobiography, “Sonny Boy,” which will be published Tuesday.
