Arnold Schwarzenegger has always been larger than life. First, he was the Austrian stud who intimidated and muscled his way into winning seven Mr. Olympia bodybuilding championships. Then he used his good looks and natural guile to make his mark in Hollywood and ultimately become one of the biggest box-office stars in the film business. Films like Conan the Barbarian, Twins, Kindergarten Cop, and True Lies are all part of the Schwarzenegger legend. But it was James Cameron’s seminal 1984 film, Terminator, that indeed established him as a major international movie star whose classic line “I’ll Be Back” became part of modern culture. He has since rekindled the role another five times throughout his career, starring in Terminator 2: Judgment Day (1991), Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines (2003), Terminator Genisys (2015), and Terminator: Dark Fate in (2019).
Arnie has worn many hats in his career: he is a businessman, investor, former professional bodybuilder and served two terms as the 38th Governor of California from 2003 until 2011. The former Mr. Universe is a Hollywood action film icon, a symbol for action heroes and a rough-hewn brand of macho swagger.
In 2011 he separated from Maria Shriver, his wife of 25 years, after it was revealed that he had fathered a son 14 years earlier with an employee in their household. He is the father of five children, four children with Shriver.
Despite his failings, Schwarzenegger is not a man to admit defeat. He has resurrected his film career in recent years, notably through Terminator: Genisys, having wisely skipped T3 (the Christian Bale film that was widely panned). Across Dark Fate, Kung Fury 2 (currently in post-production), and the recently announced Legend of Conan, there is little to suggest the 72-year-old wants to wind down.
Today in Los Angeles, he looks fit, as expected, tan and healthy. Wearing a navy blue blazer and neat blue shirt, U.S.A. studded belt buckle, and massive skull ring, he is very well put together and smoking his signature Punch cigar.
STRIPLV: All this time, all these projects, what keeps you going? SCHWARZENEGGER: Well, listen, I think that at all times, we really need to give a huge thank you to God because no matter what we are all doing, we wouldn’t be doing it without God. I have always felt this way, and my faith hasn’t changed over the years. I was blessed by God and everything that I have done or achieved in my life and career. I owe a massive amount of gratitude to God. I have been asked when I’ve had moments where God is there and has pushed me through to achieve something specific – my response is that I can’t name any specifically as that’s not the sort of relationship I have with him. Instead, for me, I must say it is more like a presence that always sits in the background of who I am and what I do. I can rely on my faith at all times, and yet I won’t burden it by asking too much of it at once. STRIPLV: Did you have a happy upbringing? SCHWARZENEGGER: Sure, I was brought up by such great parents, with my siblings and me having so much love for my mother and the discipline from my father. My relationship with my father was a lot more regimented, and there was always a lot of strictness in the way he wanted us to appreciate the world, but there was love there. Our upbringing allowed us to have the structure in our lives and the foundation to start us on our journeys in life. STRIPLV: Fate or destiny? SCHWARZENEGGER: Well, as I’ve always said, in life, we cannot just rely completely on God. What we all need to do is make sure that we try our utmost to do the best that we can in life. God gives us the tools to do that. There are success stories no matter where people are born, where they grow up, and what type of circumstances they arrive within the world. So, if you come from a small place on the map or a recognized part of the world, you can always make it – but as long as you work hard. I came from a very tiny place in Austria, a village called Thal. I was able to use the tools in front of me to prove that I was put on this Earth to do something special and to really achieve a great level of success in the world to prove that to other people, but most importantly to myself. I feel that I have gone some way towards doing that, and I am proud of the work that I have put in. STRIPLV: Do you ever wonder what might have happened if you hadn’t pursued the path you did? SCHWARZENEGGER: Not really. I don’t consider it. The fact is, the vision that I had of what I wanted to make of my life has been a big part of the reason that I have achieved success and the type of success that I wanted and set out in my younger days in my home country. It’s no fluke. I was put on this Earth to do something special and to really achieve a great level of success in the world. I guess if I hadn’t succeeded, then I may have been the type of person that my parents wanted me to be, a man who worked on a farm and had an army of kids, like the Von Trapp family from The Sound of Music! STRIPLV: Obviously, you do many gun and action movies, so I wanted to ask your perspective of gun culture in America? SCHWARZENEGGER: It’s a constitutional thing in America. It started out in the wild west and the people had their own weapons and so for people in America its quite normal to have your own gun and to have your own weapons at home to protect your home and to be part of the gun-shooting and machine-gun shooting and whatever that you want to do. And in European countries, they have a different background and a different constitution and so they don’t understand quite why the American citizens need guns. STRIPLV: As Governor of California, did you learn anything about the cartels that shocked you?
SCHWARZENEGGER: When you are Governor, you get more information about this world, so I had the information from the real world of the cartel, and I also had the information from the movie version of the cartel, and so you put those two together, and you can come up with a very good scenario of the way they operate. STRIPLV: But you have lived so many lives. Where does this passion come from to always reach out for something new? Is it something to do with your parents or your personality?
SCHWARZENEGGER: I think it also has something to do with America. It’s maybe a combination. I was always very hungry, and I believed in the philosophy of staying hungry. So as soon as you climb one mountain, go and look for the next mountain and climb that and then the next mountain. Some people would call it restless. I find great joy always in trying to do things that people think are impossible, but I think that America is just an extraordinary country because here is someone who came here and saw all those doors of opportunity opening up, and these are doors of opportunity that I would not have had in Austria; I would not have had in Japan or in the Middle East or in Africa or anywhere else. It’s just this is a very unique place. I came over here to be a bodybuilding champion because of Muscle Beach. So, you end up in Muscle Beach, and you end up where all the gyms are where the world champions train, but at the same time, it also happens to be the same place where all the people become movie stars. It’s the same town! Muscle Beach, Santa Monica, Venice, Hollywood, right next to it. So everyone who was working out at the gym in one way or another was involved somehow in the movie business. They were extras, or they were agents and stuff like this, so it was all there. So all you had to do now was have a vision and believe in your vision 100% without any doubt - because if you have a doubt about yourself, how are you going to expect other people to believe in you? You have to trust that you are special and that you can do it. And I always believed that. I had the confidence from my bodybuilding days. I had this vision of becoming this world champion in bodybuilding and everyone said it couldn’t be done. Then five years later, I became the youngest ever Mr. Universe in London. I just trained every day like hell and did it. So that message is that if you really believe in something, you can do it. So one victory leads to the next victory and leads to the next victory. STRIPLV: You were told you couldn’t make it in America because of your accent, right? SCHWARZENEGGER: That’s right. I like to think I broke the mold a bit on that one. It was really just a matter of really being out there enough to have people hear my voice - that’s why I did so many radio interviews where people don’t see me but just hear the voice, that eventually the voice became so identifiable, and the accent became so recognizable that A) people weren’t bothered by it anymore and B) it actually was a great addition because all of a sudden directors came out like John Milius (Conan the Barbarian director, 1982) and said, “If we didn’t have had Schwarzenegger we would have had to build one!” So all of a sudden, the people who said, “With a body like that, you’d never be a leading man, you’re too over-developed.” Or with Cameron saying, “If we didn’t have Schwarzenegger with his accent, I don›t think if we would have been able to sell the idea of a Terminator because he talked like a machine and he is a machine, therefore, people bought into it.” So all of a sudden it became a big plus. STRIPLV: Did you ever find yourself getting caught up in your image when it seemed like you were on top of the world? SCHWARZENEGGER: I never took myself too seriously. What I did take seriously were the issues that I tackled. So if you talk about promotion of health and fitness and you become the chairman of the President’s Council on Fitness, and you go through all 50 states, and you go into the schools, and you promote the idea of hiring more physical education teachers. Or if you go out and try to get an extra 500 million for after-school programs. Or if you go out and try to convince the people to get off fossil fuels and to go into more with renewable energy, since we have an abundant amount of that. So those issues I took very seriously, but I don’t take myself that seriously because I’m, to me, life is all about, you know, hard work, and my father always said to me, “Be useful.” To be useful, it’s very important to do something that is bigger than you are, causes that are bigger than you are but have a good time at the same time. Smile, have a good time, have a positive attitude, and see that the glass is half-full rather than half-empty.