Sid Owen may be remembered for playing Ricky in Eastenders, but he could have swapped Albert Square for Hollywood having revealed A-lister Al Pacino wanted to adopt him.
Sid and Al starred as father and son in the box office blockbuster Revolution when Sid was 13-years-old and now the Londoner says the Oscar winner had considered becoming his father after finding out his mum had sadly died.
"He knew I had no parents and was from a difficult background, though we didn’t really talk about it." revealed Sid.
"He didn’t have kids of his own then and I found out later he had considered adopting me."
Sid's mum Joan died from cancer when he was just seven while his violent, alcoholic father ended up in jail.
Despite his tough beginnings, Sid was cast as Ned, the son of Al Pacino ’s character Tom Dobb in Revolution, and says The Godfather star had invited him to New York once they'd finished filming.
"We kept in touch and years later, I took my first serious girlfriend, Amanda, to New York where he invited us to stay with him and his partner at the time, Diane Keaton," writes Sid, who says he still catches up with Al from time to time.
The charismatic actor explained that he had an upper hand when he went into audition for the role in the historical British drama as the feed line was “I have to tell you your mum’s died."
Sid says the thought of of losing his own mum brought back a lot of emotion and that that was what probably got him the job as he did a "bloody good job of crying."
In his new autobiography Rags to Ricky, as serialised in The Sun, Sid also discusses his drug issues, including snorting as much as £200 of the drug a night in the 1990s.
In the book he writes: “It’s recreational then all of a sudden it’s like, ‘Hang on, I’ve got to get through pages of scripts, and then go to work’.
“You think you can do it and get away with it. I thought I could juggle the two, but I soon realised it was a silly idea.”
He claims he once drove to the BBC studios in the 1990s “coked up to my eyeballs and way over the drink-drive limit’’.
However in good news the actor has recently revealed he's dating a restaurant worker he first met 23 years ago.
Sid, who was last seen on the soap in 2O12 says he's the "happiest he's ever been" with Victoria more than two decades after their previous love affair .
Sid 's character wed fiery Bianca Jackson, played by Patsy Palmer, and off-screen he was previously engaged to dancer Carty Hubbard, 41, and TV host Polly Parsons, 37.
