Al Pacino attributes his Oscar-winning success to his complex and troubled relationship with his mother, Rose, who died of an overdose when he was 22.
Despite her reservations about his acting career, Pacino credits her with inadvertently shaping his path by taking him to the movies during his childhood.
In his new memoir, Sonny Boy, Pacino opens up about his mother’s struggles with mental health, including a suicide attempt when he was six, and her eventual death in 1962.
He also reflects on how she saved him from a life of crime growing up in New York and how he lost friends to drug addiction.
“I wasn’t aware that my mother was having problems until one day when I was six years old and getting ready to go out and play. I was sitting in a chair in the kitchen while my mother laced up my shoes and put a sweater on me, and I noticed that she was crying. I wondered what the matter was but I didn’t know how to ask. She was kissing me all over and right before I left she gave me a great big hug.
“It was unusual but I was eager to meet up with the other kids and I gave it no more thought.”
Pacino recounted a vivid childhood memory of playing outside when a disturbance broke out nearby, close to his grandparents’ home. He was then informed that his mother, Rose, was involved in the commotion.
He said: “There was an ambulance in front of the building and there, coming out the front doors, carried on a stretcher, was my mother. She had attempted suicide.” Rose recovered at least partially from her fragile state and went on to parent Pacino for a number of years.
When Pacino was 22, his mother Rose passed away due to an overdose. However, Pacino has difficulty accepting that her death was intentional, as she didn’t leave a note, unlike the previous attempt she made when he was a child.
He noted: “Some people thought that she had committed suicide, as she had tried to almost 15 years earlier. But she left no note. She was just gone. That’s why I have always kept a question mark next to her death.”