The secret to your success?
I mean, one part we know is this drive,
but the other is you're never satisfied.
So after you become this world
champion, bodybuilder
and win these awards year after year
after year,
you decide, well, okay, that's enough.
I want to become a movie star.
And you end up in the movie Pumping Iron
there you are.
The one and only
Arnold Schwarzenegger
first of all,
what do you think when you see that guy?
How there was a long time ago
and I you doesn't look like that anymore,
I tell you that. But,
you know, even today, it's
the funny thing is,
even though it was me, I'm the day.
All these years later,
also amazed at my drive to the head.
And that is unbelievable ambition
and all that stuff
because there was just
absolutely nothing that could stop me.
It was my dream.
I could see very clearly
to be the greatest bodybuilder
of all times.
Eventually, I felt like okay, I got it.
Anything that you can visualize,
anything you believe in, 100%
you can achieve.
And this is what I did in acting
and then everything else that it did.
So let's pick up on the acting.
You're decide
now or you're going to be
and you're not an actor,
you're going to be a movie star.
And the producers say
you can never be a movie star
because you got this accent
so you find the perfect vehicle
for your body and your accent.
Conan the Barbarian.
Is it true
that you had to do
most of the stunts yourself
because they couldn't find a double
who had anything like your body?
I think the only thing I didn't do
was the from far away.
There was a scene
where I grabbed the girl, Valeria,
from one horse to my horse
to pick her up, and the ride off
that was the only thing we got away
with with a stuntman.
But everything that was close,
I had to do everything myself.
It was unbelievable,
the injuries to the head
when it was finished with this.
I mean, it was painful.
But like Miller said, pain is temporary,
but the movie will be permanent.
And this is exactly the way
we always felt about them and we had pain
then in 1984,
your breakthrough role in The Terminator,
this was the iconic scene here. We are.
I'm a friend of Sarah Connor.
I was told that she's here
courtesy of Please, I can't see her.
She's making a statement where she
look at me. Take a while.
I wait.
There's a bench over there.
I'll be back
I read somewhere that you
and the director, James Cameron,
thought about how you would say that
line. That's true.
Your research is absolutely correct.
Um, I wanted to say I will be back
as is my machine.
Like I will be back.
And this is.
No, no,
I'll be back. Relax.
That's it.
Trust me, I will be back. This better.
So it was just one of those crazy things
until he finally snapped,
and he says, Well, wait a minute.
I'm the writer, right?
You want to rewrite my script?
I said, No.
I said, Well, then just do your acting.
I don't tell you how to act.
Don't tell me how to write.
And so that's how we settled it.
And then it became one
of the most repeated
lines, movie lines in history.
You've also lived larger than life,
big cigars and big cars.
And the question I have is,
is that really you or is that
part of the image you wanted to project?
That you're done?
No, I couldn't answer that
because I always enjoyed it.
I remember that Maria's father,
Sargent Shriver,
he will always take me down
to his basement and he will say,
Arnold, I know you don't smoke,
but I mean, that may
expose you to some good Cuban cigars,
but don't talk about it.
And then he will turn out the cigars.
Yeah, exactly.
Because if it is his Russian friends,
because he was doing business
in Russia
for Armenia, hamburgers, selling,
you know, oil deals and stuff like that.
So he started clipping it for me
and lighting it for me.
And he was smoking down there
and having a great time
and having all kinds of discussions
so we were kind of becoming buddies.
It was not just my future
kind of father in law,
but we were always buddies
because we were doing something
together, smoking,
which he was always a big believer in.
So I just continued on,
and my wife never complained about it
because I said, Well,
it was your father
that exposed me the cigar smoking.
He made me smoke.
So she never complained about it either.
By 2003,
you decide
you're bored being a huge movie star,
you're going to go into politics.
So of course you got elected
governor of California.
And I wonder
how moved were you by
the idea
that millions of people in this state
decided to trust you with their future
and to some degree,
because this is a whole new world
for you,
even Arnold Schwarzenegger,
were you a little scared
by the challenge?
The key thing I'll tell you was
that the people were looking
for an outsider
and I played that outsider all the way.
As a matter of fact, I even very rarely
put on a suit and the tie
I kept on my alligator boots
to show that I'm not going to
all of a sudden
flip and say, okay, oh, my God,
I'm running for office.
I have to change my boots.
Or something,
because they knew this with a head on.
I kept smoking my cigars.
I drove my hammer.
I did
everything except
that was politically incorrect.
And the people loved it because I said,
that's the Arnold.
He is not going to change.
He's not going to lie about himself.
This is what he's going to present.
This this is this package.
That's why they voted for me.
And to answer your question,
which is, yes, I was crying
when I walked by the TV set in my bedroom
to get dressed
for the victory celebration.
I mean, I just was
absolutely stunned by that.
And so happy
I want to ask you about something
personal in your documentary on Netflix.
You talk openly
and painfully
about the affair that produced a son
and that ended your marriage.
Here you are
I'm going to have to live with it
the rest of my life.
I mean, you know, people will remember
my successes yes.
And they will also remember
those failures as a major failure.
I mean, I had failures in the past, but,
you know, in my career,
I mean, this is like
a whole different ballgame.
This is like
a whole different dimension of failure.
What do you want us to understand
about all that
I think the documentary
makes it very clear
that I'm a person that has huge successes
and huge failures
and that was one of them.
And I'm not proud of it.
I despise it, but it is what it is.
And I feel terrible about it.
And, you know,
but I don't want to get into it.
And I think I said enough
in this documentary,
when people watch it, they will get it
finally, let's talk about aging.
You're very open in the documentary that
when you
look at yourself in the mirror now,
you don't like what
you see the natural effects
of of the aging.
How hard is that for you to grow old?
Well, you know, Chris,
I don't dwell on it,
but you have to understand
at the same time
that I was a person that even in the day
when I was competing
and winning my seventh Mr.
Olympia competition,
I looked in the mirror
and I was not happy with my body.
So imagine now
how I feel about my body today.
You were quoted recently
as saying that heaven is a fantasy
and that you hate the idea of dying
Is that because that's one thing
that even Arnold Schwarzenegger
cannot control?
Well, first of all,
I did not say that heaven is a fantasy.
I said that heaven, as it is explained
a lot of times, is a fantasy
that you and I will meet
in 50 years from now.
We will be up there
and doing interviews again.
But in heaven, it's not going to happen.
There will be.
So I believe in heaven
and I believe in God.
And all of this
if I just don't think
that it will be in the same form.
That's what I was saying.
But I mean, you know,
and I hate the age of
the idea of getting old
and I hate the idea of dying.
I think it's very simple
because, I mean,
look at the life I've had.
Look at this life.
I mean, it's like, unbelievable.
And and to have a life like that,
and then eventually it will end.
I mean, it's just the lifestyle.