Al Pacino recalls how his mother ‘saved his life’ before her fatal overdose as he credits her with his Oscar-winning career

In his new book Sonny Boy: A Memoir, Al Pacino shares how his late mother influenced his Oscar-winning career.

The Godfather star, now 84, grew up in the Bronx with his mother Rose and grandparents after his parents divorced, and he credits her love of movies with guiding his future.

Though Rose struggled with addiction, including a suicide attempt when Al was 6 and a fatal overdose when he was 22, the actor said he realized how grateful he was to have had her in his life as he prepared his acceptance speech for the 1992 Oscar for Scent of a Woman.

“One day I’ll be 52 and I’ll look in the mirror and wonder who to thank in my acceptance speech,” he wrote in Sonny Boy, according to an excerpt in The New Yorker. ‘I realize that I’m still here because of my mother. Of course, I have her to thank. She’s the one who kept me from a path that led to delinquency and violence, to heroin.

I lost three [friends] that way. I wasn’t under strict supervision, but my mother was watching where I was. She saved my life.’

The Godfather star, who is now 84 and grew up in The Bronx with his mother Rose (pictured) and grandparents after his parents’ divorce, believes her love of movies guided his future path

He also spoke candidly about Rose’s mental health issues, saying she “occasionally visited a psychiatrist when Grandpa had the money to pay.”

He continued: ‘I didn’t know my mother had problems until one day, when I was six years old, I wanted to go outside and play.

‘I was sitting on a chair in the kitchen while my mother tied my shoes and put a sweater on me, and I saw that she was crying.

“I wondered what was going on, but I didn’t know how to ask. She kissed me all over and just before I left she gave me a big hug. It was unusual, but I wanted to meet the other children and I didn’t think about it anymore.”

He remembered playing outside his grandparents’ house at the time and suddenly noticing a commotion in the neighborhood, and he soon realized that his mother was the center of attention.

‘There was an ambulance outside the building and there, coming out the front door, carried out on a stretcher, was my mother. She had tried to commit suicide.’

In the book, Pacino fondly recalls that his mother introduced him to the film business, which fueled his passion for acting. Eventually, however, they had a falling out over his career choice, prompting him to leave home.

Despite dropping out of traditional classes, he was accepted into the High School of Performing Arts after a successful audition.

Pacino pictured as a baby with Sal and Rose in 1940. His father left them when he was only two years old

In the past, the Scarface actor has cited the fact that his father Sal abandoned him at the age of two as a reason for his unruly teenage years

After Rose’s overdose, Pacino questioned whether it was another suicide attempt. He noted that Rose had not left a note.

“Some people thought she had committed suicide, as she had tried to do almost 15 years earlier. But she didn’t leave a note. She was just gone. That’s why I’ve always questioned her death.”

The Scarface actor has in the past cited his father’s abandonment of Sal at the age of two as a reason for his unruly teenage years. He said: ‘My teachers came to the conclusion that I needed a father.’

Sal left the Hollywood star and his mother after the couple split.

Sal ended up marrying five times, and Pacino told Esquire in 2003, “What does that tell me? That he liked married life. Okay, what does that tell me? It tells me that we’re creatures of habit.”

Sal was an insurance salesman for 30 years before becoming a restaurateuraccording to the Los Angeles Times.

“My teachers’ conclusion was that I needed a father. I wasn’t an out-of-control teenager, but I was close,” he said. The actor pictured with Sal in 1997

Pacino danced the tango with Gabrielle Anwar in his Academy Award-winning performance in 1992’s Scent of a Woman

He owned the restaurant and bar Pacino’s Lounge in Covina, just outside LA, until he retired in 1991.

Sal’s fifth wife was actress Katherin Kovin-Pacino. He died in 2005 of a heart attack.

The memoir comes as Pacino has been praised as a “great” father by his girlfriend Noor Alfallah, 30, who had a child with him last year.

Al is also the father of three other children with two different women: he has 22-year-old twins, Olivia Pacino and Anton James Pacino, with Beverly D’Angelo, and a daughter, Julie Pacino, 33, with Jan Tarrant.