Al Pacino, age 83, has recently fathered a child with one Noor Alfallah, age 29.
Hoary male celebrities cavorting with much younger women is one of the oldest stories in the world, of course. And if an 83-year-old man can find a woman 54 years his junior who wants to hang with him, who am I to judge?
I’m presently 55, and I’ll be 83 in 2051. So if I’m to match Al Pacino’s record, my last girlfriend will have been born in 2022. I’m sure that no one out there will find that idea offensive.
But seriously, consenting adults are consenting adults, even when a half-century of age and life experience divides them. My quibble here is not with a consensual December-May romance, but rather with the idea of an 83-year-old man deliberately fathering a child.
Al Pacino is six years older than my dad, and—once again—I’m 55. I’m grateful that my dad is still around and still a part of my life. He’s twenty-two years my senior.
No one knows how long their parents will live. No one who becomes a parent knows how many years they’ll have with a child. As the Japanese say, 来年の事を言えば鬼が笑う (“Speak of next year, and devil will laugh at your folly.”)
But there are ways to practically guarantee that you won’t see a child grow up. One way to do that is to have a child in your 80s.
Al Pacino already had three children from prior relationships, so it wasn’t like he just wanted to experience fatherhood before he died.
Speaking of which: the odds of the actor seeing his latest progeny graduate from high school—or even grade school—are rather slim. No child is guaranteed a long time with both biological parents, but every child deserves better odds than this.
-ET