Al Pacino Says He Was Almost Kidnapped by a Crazed Fan After ‘The Godfather’

It turns out Al Pacino’s personal life is almost as dramatic as his professional one. In his new memoir, Sonny Boy, Pacino revealed that one time, a woman tried to kidnap him, and he almost had to jump out of a moving car to escape. We have the exact words The Godfather actor wrote below!

Al Pacino opens up about almost getting kidnapped 

In his newly released memoir Sonny Boy, Pacino vividly described how, after a night out with Gene Hackman, he “got so drunk that I could not find my way home.” 

Soon after, “a woman said to me, ‘Oh, I’ll drive you home.’ And without a second thought, I got into her car with her.”

“But as we drove, even in my daze, I could recognize that she was not taking me back to where I was staying,” the actor wrote. “I said to her, ‘What is going on here?’ And she said straight out, ‘I’m kidnapping you.'”

At the time of the attempted kidnapping, Pacino had already starred in The Godfather and had some crazed fans who would often approach him in bars. Still, the actor wrote that he knew the woman kidnapping him was not just “some aggressive flirtation.”

“I am from the South Bronx. When I see some crazy person trying to do something to me, I know how to escape. I said, ‘No, you’re not. I’m getting out.’ She said, ‘No, no,’ and she kept driving.”

Despite the fact that he was intoxicated and scared, Pacino was not going to allow himself to be kidnapped. 

“I opened the door as if to jump out of the car,” the actor wrote. “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.”

After threatening that, though, the woman released the error in her ways and “closed the door and took me home.” 

It remains unclear what happened to the women. 

Other shocking revelations from Al Pacino’s memoir 

If being kidnapped wasn’t enough, Pacino also revealed numerous other things in his memoir, including how he was almost cast in the Star Wars films. 

“After The Godfather, they would have let me play anything. They offered me the role of Han Solo in Star Wars. So, there I am, reading Star Wars,” Pacino wrote. 

He also opened up about his decade-spanning friendship with fellow actor Robert DeNiro. 

“While there are things we have in common, we are as different from each other as any two people can be. And there was competition between us. There had to be. Especially when the offers coming in were similar, roles that would go to either one of us and that either of us could have played. There, and only there, is the stain of competition.”

He also commented on how the two of them having similar acting roles helped their friendship. 

Wrote Pacino, “Bob and I connected through ­film—​­it was film that ignited him, that gave him a medium and a means of expression, and we both related to the art in film.” 

The actor also opened up about almost dying from COVID and how traumatic that was for him during the books press tour. 

Sonny Boy is available for purchase now wherever books are sold.