It’s always interesting to look back on the career of a great artist and try to determine which projects were done for personal fulfillment and which were for the money. It’s even more interesting when the artist is there to draw those distinctions on their own. And that is exactly what Al Pacino did in a recent interview for The New York Times. But be forewarned, this could be a disillusioning read for those who assumed his performance of the famous “Dunkaccino” jingle in 2011’s “Jack and Jill” came from the heart.
Pacino was very candid about the reason he agreed to appear in the 2011 Adam Sandler comedy which has a 3% Rotten Tomatoes score. In the movie, he plays a demented version of himself and falls in love with Sander’s character, Jill, in drag. He took the role for a surprising financial reason:
“It [“Jack and Jill”] came at a time in my life that I needed it, because it was after I found out I had no more money. My accountant was in prison, and I needed something quickly. So I took this.”
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Pacino and dozens of other celebrities, including Natalie Portman, Carly Simon, Wesley Snipes, Uma Thurman, and Martin Scorsese, lost millions of dollars in a Ponzi scheme orchestrated by Kenneth I. Starr, who ended up serving a 7.5-year sentence for his financial crimes. But Pacino’s loss is the public’s gain, and by most accounts, he gives a performance in the film that is in its own way just as committed as his acclaimed roles in much more respectable projects like “The Godfather,” “Scent of a Woman,” “Scarface,” or “Dog Day Afternoon.”
If you’re wondering how arguably the greatest actor of his generation could wind up in dire straights even with an accounting scandal, in his upcoming memoir, Al also admits to being absolutely terrible with money for his entire adult life. He playfully describes pouring money straight down the drain. Apparently, at his peak in the 1990s, Al was spending as much as $400,000 per month on his lifestyle. That’s the same as spending $900,000 per month today. He was paying his landscaper $400,000 per year (again, roughly $900,000 a year in today’s dollars). His gardens better have been amazing!
Pacino takes it all in stride. It helps that he seems to have recovered financially from that 2011 low point. He had to do a few more bad movies just for the money, but he has also continued to be highly valuable in the right circumstances. Al has an open-ended deal with HBO, where he earns $10 million per HBO-exclusive movie. He has made three such movies to date. He earned $20 million in 2019 to star in Martin Scorcese’s “The Irishman.”
The only thing that does seem to annoy Al is that some fans seem to think that his Dunkin’ Donuts ad in “Jack & Jill” was actually a real commercial rather than a bit for a movie:
“There’s this thing I do in that film: They got me doing a Dunkin’ Donuts commercial. You know how many people think I actually made that commercial?”
Thankfully, Pacino never got so heard up in the early 2010s that he had to do any actual commercials for Dunkin’ Donuts. But here’s the Dunkacino ad from the movie in case you missed it: