Al Pacino Reveals Surprising Reason He Never Takes Souvenirs from the Sets of His Movies (Exclusive)

In his memoir Sonny Boy, Al Pacino makes clear he’s no rat. Turns out, he’s no pack rat either. 

Despite starring in some of the most acclaimed and iconic films of the past several decades — The Godfather, Scarface and Dog Day Afternoon, to name a few — Pacino tells PEOPLE he’s not one to take souvenirs from a set.

Not even Tony Montana’s white Scarface suit or anything from the Godfather franchise? Nope.

“I’ll probably lose them,” Pacino admits, explaining his thinking. “For a long while, I used to bop from one place to another. I always was a bit of a gypsy.” Pacino has long divided his time between New York and California.

The only thing he has kept? A homemade Oscar trophy that fans made for him after 1983’s Scarface was snubbed by the Academy Awards.

Pacino was performing in a production of David Mamet’s American Buffalo in San Francisco, and a group of fans came to see him following a matinee. 

“It was just around the time the awards were coming out, the Oscars were coming out and I didn’t get nominated,” recalls Pacino. “So the fans out there, they used to wait for me when a show was over. They all got together and gave me this huge Oscar. I thought, ‘My God.’ I still have it at my house.”

“It was huge, proportionately huge compared to the real Oscar. You know what I’m saying? So I was stunned by that. I was very happy with that,” he continues.

By the time Scarface came out, Pacino had been nominated for five Academy Awards but never won. He took home the trophy for Best Actor for his performance in 1992’s Scent of a Woman, besting Clint Eastwood (Unforgiven), Robert Downey Jr. (Chaplin), Denzel Washington (Malcolm X) and Stephen Rea (The Crying Game). 

Pacino also writes about that moment in Sonny Boy, one of many personal, behind-the-scenes stories he shares from his storied, six-decade career.

The actor tells PEOPLE he never thought he’d write a memoir but had been approached several times over the past decade and finally decided to put pen to page so his loved ones would know his history. 

When he started to think about his past, stories “just started coming out,” he says, “and it went every which way it went.”

Says Pacino, “At least according to me, I’ve had quite a big life.”

Sonny Boy is out Oct. 15 from Penguin Press and is available for preorder now, wherever books are sold.