Al Pacino ‘Didn’t Have a Pulse’ After Contracting COVID-19 During Pandemic (Exclusive)

Al Pacino has experienced many things throughout his lifetime — including a brush with death.

While speaking to PEOPLE about his upcoming memoir, Sonny Boy, the Scarface actor, 84, recalls how he technically died while ill with COVID-19 during the pandemic, which he writes about in the book.

Revealing that he “didn’t have a pulse” at one point during his health emergency, Pacino, 84, says, “I thought I experienced death. I might not have. I don’t think I have, really. I know I made it.”

“I don’t think I died. Everybody thought I was dead. How could I be dead? If I was dead, I fainted,” he continues. “And when I opened my eyes, there were six paramedics in my living room. There was an ambulance outside the door, and two of my doctors in those space suits [like] on Mars. I looked around and I thought, ‘What happened to me?’ ”

“So I couldn’t have died, because how did all those people gather together, the ambulance in front of my house?” Pacino adds.

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The Godfather star says that his “great assistant Michael Quinn” immediately contacted the paramedics when he noticed something was wrong. “He got the people coming, because the nurse that was taking care of me said, ‘I don’t feel a pulse on this guy,’ ” Pacino remembers.

The House of Gucci star recalled later reflecting on his serious bout of COVID and thinking, “It was gone. As Shakespeare in Hamlet says, ‘No more. To be, or not to be.’ And then he says, ‘No more.’ And it’s no more. Well, it’s not. I don’t know, who knows?”

Despite the harrowing experience, when asked if his health scare changed the way he now lives his life, Pacino tells PEOPLE, “Not at all.”

Sonny Boy will be available for purchase on Oct. 8 anywhere books are sold.