Al Pacino has detailed an extremely painful-sounding childhood injury that thinking about still makes him feel “squeamish”.
Setting the scene in his new memoir Sonny Boy, the Oscar-winning actor, 84, says he was around 10 at the time and describes it as “one of the most embarrassing experiences of his life”.
The Scarface star goes on to state that even now, decades later, he he is “haunted” by the memory.
“I was walking on a thin, iron fence, doing my tightrope dance. It had been raining all morning, and sure enough, I slipped and fell, and the iron bar hit me directly between my legs,” he says in an excerpt.
Explaining that when he was younger he “seemed to cheat death on a regular basis,” he likened himself to “a cat with many more than nine lives”, adding: “I had more mishaps and accidents than I can count.”
Pacino noted that he was in such pain that he could “hardly walk home”, and that an “older guy” saw him struggling and “carried him” to an aunt’s apartment.
He continued: “I lay there on the bed, with my pants completely down around my ankles as the three women in my life - my mother, my aunt, and my grandmother - poked and prodded at my penis in a semi-panic.
While they waited for a doctor to make a house visit, he says he had only one thought in his mind.
He explained: “I thought, God, please take me now, as I heard them whispering things to one another as they conducted their inspection.”
Elsewhere in the tome. which was released on October 15, Pacino - who is regarded as one of the finest actors of his generation - said he found himself “broke” after working with a corrupt accountant.
He said alarm bells started to ring in 2011 when he began “to get warnings that my accountant at the time, a guy who had lots of celebrity clients, was not to be trusted.”
At the time, Pacino was living it up renting an extravagant Beverly Hills home, taking friends and family on European trips, and spending money like it was going out of style.
Unbeknownst to him, his accountant wasn’t on the level and ended up costing him $50million (£38.4m).
Adding to his woes were the big money parts weren’t coming in as they used to.
He wrote of this time: “The big paydays that I was used to just weren’t coming around anymore. The pendulum had swung, and I found it harder to find parts for myself.
“Jack and Jill was the first film I made after I lost my money. To be honest, I did it because I didn’t have anything else. Adam Sandler wanted me, and they paid me a lot for it. So I went out and did it, and it helped. I love Adam, he was wonderful to work with and has become a dear friend. He also just happens to be a great actor and a hell of a guy.”
