Two giant villains, their muscles taut under bearskins and burnished armor, were beating Conan, the barbarian, to a blue pulp. Blood streamed from his mouth and nose, from the wound in his arm, and from his crushed feet.
Penthouse Interview: Arnold Schwarzenegger
Picking their vanquished play-thing up like a broken doll, the giants half-dragged and half-hurled him into a stone fountain. As he lay in the shallow water, breathing heavily and crying out defiantly for revenge, the giants closed in for the kill.
“Cut!” yelled John Milius, the bearish writer-director of Dino De Laurentiis’s film Conan, which was shot in Spain last winter and spring. The camera crew changed position while a makeup man dabbed Conan’s wounds with stage blood. Dissatisfied, Milius snatched the blood bottle from the startled technician’s grasp and squirted it liberally over much of Conan’s body, letting red drops discolor the fountain water.
“Thanks, John,” said Arnold Schwarzenegger, his teeth chattering and his body shivering in the unheated fountain. As the only actor in the world with the heroic build and physical stamina needed to portray Robert E. Howard’s mythical barbarian, Schwarzenegger had already been battered and hurled a half-dozen times that afternoon and in the previous weeks of filming had been assaulted by a forty-foot hydraulic snake, had acted semi-nude in a snowstorm, fallen from a four-story tower, and nearly been killed in one of the picture’s two dozen sword fights. “Hey, John,” he continued through clenched teeth, “you want special effects to make up another gallon of blood for this shot?”
Milius gave one of his frequent Cheshire cat grins and emptied the bottle over the actor’s shoulder-length wig. Turning to former football star Ben Davidson, who plays one of the giants, Milius pointed at Schwarzenegger and ordered softly, “Terminate with extreme prejudice.”
Although shooting began at 8:30 that morning, the actors continued to play out the confrontation between good and evil until darkness enshrouded the set twelve hours later.
Finally, Schwarzenegger was allowed to wash off the blood and remove his makeup and soaking-wet costume. Not that the thirteen-time world body-building champion-turned-actor was going to gripe. “You have to psych yourself into the right frame of mind to get through days like this,” he said, sitting in his tiny trailer dressing room, which was perched on the edge of a cliff of a Spanish mountain. “I just visualize myself as a gladiator, like in the old Roman days. Back then all you had was your water, a chunk of meat, and a cold place to battle it out, like Conan is doing in this film. So when everyone here complains about the rain, the snowstorms, the cold, and the long working hours, it doesn’t register in my brain as being torture or hard labor. I was through worse as a child, growing up under Russian occupation in Austria after the Second World War. Then we endured hardships like not having food or personal freedom as a matter of survival. Now I’m getting paid for it.”
Ever since winning his first body-building contest at the age of eighteen, Schwarzenegger, now thirty-four, has planned and executed his life’s game plan with the consummate skill of a chess master. From 1970 to 1976 he won every competition he entered, gradually expanding his interests and proficiencies to include a thriving physical-fitness mail-order business, frequent appearances on the lecture circuit, the writing of three best-selling books, and an impressive acting debut in the film Stay Hungry.
Interviewer James Delson met with “The Austrian Oak” while Conan was being filmed in Spain. Talking over a two-week period there and again last summer in Santa Monica, Calif., where Schwarzenegger resides, Delson was impressed by the athlete-actor’s style, openness, and willingness to give of himself despite physical injury (a strained knee ligament in Spain) and exhaustion (the final conversations were crammed into a marathon thirty-hour session, with only a six-hour sleep break at the halfway mark).
“Anybody who had the potential of being heroic has been killed …. The last decade was a very antiheroic time, and America suffered because of it. Now people are looking for heroes again.”
Besides writing his fourth book, managing his business affairs, and pondering the fate of Conan, due out from Universal Pictures next year, Schwarzenegger spends most of his time with girlfriend Maria Shriver, daughter of Sargent Shriver, who is Arnold’s political opposite. In the interview that follows, the ex-body builder waxes philosophical on politics (he is conservative), personal freedom (he would limit it for the good of the country), religion (he is Catholic), gun control (he is opposed), freedom of the press (he thinks it’s dangerous), the fifty-five-mile speed limit (he is violently opposed), his acting (he wants to be the next Burt Reynolds), heroes (from FDR to Reagan) and a number of unusual aspects of body building (homosexuality, groupies, psychological warfare during competition, women’s involvement, and money’s ruinous influence).
For a man who has pushed his body to its physical limits, the use of steroids in sports seemed a natural starting point for the conversation.
Have you had much personal contact with the use of steroids in body building?
Schwarzenegger: There hasn’t been an athletic event where they haven’t been used.
What do steroids do?
Schwarzenegger: They’re supposed to make you gain weight, but even the people who have been doing research on them don’t know. There’s a big debate over their use. People wonder if it is a psychological drug, or if it makes your body retain more water and therefore makes you heavier. Basically, if you take steroids, you get hungrier and thirstier. So what puts on the weight is putting more food and water in your system. They’re not too good in body building, because even though they’re helpful in gaining size, body builders take diarrhetics to lose the extra water the day before a competition.
Have you used steroids?
Schwarzenegger: Yes, on and off from 1970 to 1975, for the single two-month period before the annual World Championship.
It’s been suggested that they adversely affect muscle tissue.
Schwarzenegger: The muscle tissue is the one that retains water. The muscle tissue, the fat tissue, everything blows up. It has almost the same effect as when a woman takes birth control pills. She gets bloated and feels the water retention in her system.
What are their side effects?
Schwarzenegger: If people take twenty a day instead of three or four, thinking the extra pills will make them five times as big, they get headaches, their hair falls out, and they can ultimately suffer kidney failure. People with the worst side effects admitted that they had been taking steroids for years instead of just six weeks, as they had been told to do.
Are steroids considered prescription drugs?
Schwarzenegger: Yeah. Sports doctors prescribe them. But they’re available on the black market as well.
Have you heard of cases where people suffered temporary sterility?
Schwarzenegger: I’ve heard of them, yeah, but I don’t know of any specific cases.
Were you surprised when an athlete was recently stripped of his world record because he had used steroids to obtain it?
Schwarzenegger: Yes, because I wasn’t aware that stricter controls were being imposed in sports over steroid use. Before now there were tests for other drugs, like speed, but until recently there was no way of detecting steroids. I hope this type of testing is continued so the use of drugs by athletes will be completely eradicated.
Before you did Stay Hungry, the director, Bob Rafelson, said he wanted you to lose forty pounds. You took it off in a very short time span and gained it right back to appear in Pumping Iron. This is similar to what Robert De Niro did for Raging Bull. Is this healthy?
Schwarzenegger: First of all, you have to realize that you can gain weight in different ways: There is muscular weight and fat weight. With any person who goes up forty pounds-like from a slim De Niro body to a heavyset body-in a short period of time, only five or ten pounds can be muscle. The rest is fat. That’s dangerous. It throws your metabolism and your heart off. So what De Niro did was to feed his muscle cells fat to gain the weight. That means the muscle cells will never disappear again, in his whole life: they shrink if you deprive them of fatty goods, but they’re ready to expand again very quickly. So he has to be on a strict diet all his life. It was tough, what he did. He’s a guy who really gets into his character, but he’s probably not aware of what he did. In my case, I never expanded my fat cells, only my muscle cells. When I lost forty pounds for Stay Hungry, I took much less protein, which made my muscle cells shrink. Then, when I fed them well again, they did the same as fat cells will do, that is, exploded again back to normal size.
“I was propositioned at competitions by men and women who wanted to have sex with me. I used to be approached much, much more … Maybe they can’t relate to me anymore.”
When you were an adolescent, you loved to go to those Italian sword-and-sandal movies. What made them your favorites?
Schwarzenegger: When you’re a teenager, you look for something inspirational to motivate you. Since I had begun my body-building training, I went to see anything that had to do with physical strength and heroic characters. They were corny, but they were great for us, because we could check out Steve Reeves’s triceps, how his latissimus looked when he was throwing the javelin, and how Reg Parks’s calves looked when he walked up the steps.
One of the things that Conan and the recent crop of adventure films offer the youth audience is a new generation of heroes.
Schwarzenegger: Kids will always need somebody to look up to and be inspired by, other than their fathers. But in the ten years that I’ve been in the United States, anybody who had the potential of being heroic has been killed by people or by the media. The last decade was a very anti-heroic time, and America suffered because of it. But now people are looking for heroes again.
Who are your heroes?
Schwarzenegger: I’m not an idolizer of heroes. The more you idolize people, the less you make of yourself. But there are people I greatly admire, people who have done a lot with their lives and have had a great influence on society. Ronald Reagan came from an acting background to become president through persistence, will-power, and continuous learning. Franklin Roosevelt convinced, motivated, and changed a nation. He got the country going again. It was the same with Jack Kennedy. He stimulated the economy and had a refreshing impact on the country. I also admire Adam Smith and Milton Friedman, whose influence in economics helped keep the free-enterprise system and the supply side of economics alive. Then, of course, there’s Mother Teresa, who has given her life to help thousands of people in ghettos all over the world.
You were brought up as a Roman Catholic. Do you still go to church regularly?
Schwarzenegger: I’m not into a traditional pattern of going to church every Sunday. But when I think about it, I go.
Do you still pray?
Schwarzenegger: Sometimes, yes.
Did you ever do it in connection with competition?
Schwarzenegger: No. God couldn’t care less about my winning the Mr. Olympia contest. It has to be something bigger than that! Compared to the real problems of the world-hunger, natural disasters, wars, illness, and misery-the Mr. Olympia contest is nothing. It’s just when you’re posing on stage that it’s very important. When I do pray, I rarely ask for things. I just thank God for all the good things that have happened to me.
Can you recall the first time you walked into a body-building gym?
Schwarzenegger: Very clearly. I had never seen men huffing and puffing with weights before. They wore very little, unlike in other sports, where you always have a training suit on. And they were watching themselves in the mirror while they exercised, which I found very strange at the time. There was enormous pain in their faces, which was a shock. And the quietness in the gymnasium was also strange, unlike in team sports, where everybody yells and screams all the time and teases each other. The men moved out of each other’s way, like lions. They walked around in big circles, and nobody bumped into each other. It was very dark, with water dripping down the wall, freezing cold, like a bunker.
The body builders you first trained with introduced you to sex?
Schwarzenegger: They said that women were really just there to have sex with, and at fifteen I believed them. On Sundays they went to train out at a lake near town, taking their weights and some female companions. These men were established athletes in Austria, and the women treated them like kings. They liked guys who had good builds, and it was a very pleasurable scene altogether. Nobody knew who belonged to whom; it was just a bunch of girls going with a bunch of guys. It was very free and open, without any morals, especially about sex. At first I had hang-ups, because I was very young, but that was removed very quickly when I saw what was going on around me. It wasn’t until years later that I realized I could relate to women on a variety of levels, from platonic friendship to serious relationships, which the athletes I trained with told me was the wrong thing to do if I was serious about my training to win the championships. But I was introduced to sex in the right way; so I didn’t develop any hang-ups about it like some young men do.
Has your size ever put any women off?
Schwarzenegger: I once walked into the ocean in Venice, Calif., and started talking to a young woman, and she turned around and looked at me, and her eyes opened wide, like she was in shock. With the combination of my accent and my body, it freaked her out so much that she ran out of the water, screaming, “You look like Dracula!”
Were you always attracted to the same type of woman?
Schwarzenegger: I never looked for what other people considered the most gorgeous woman. Sometimes a “six” for somebody else was a “ten” for me. I want a woman who has a lot of joy and is always with it, someone brighter than I am, faster, and someone that I can learn from. Someone I can travel with and find stimulating. It’s a package of me and her together, complementing each other.
Is that what you’ve found with your girlfriend, Maria Shriver?
Schwarzenegger: She is the ultimate of what I have been looking for.
How did you meet her?
Schwarzenegger: In 1977 Ethel [Kennedy] invited me to participate in the Robert F. Kennedy Pro-Celebrity Tennis Tournament in New York. At the party the night before the tournament, Maria’s mother, Eunice [Kennedy Shriver] introduced us. Maria was so stunning I couldn’t take my eyes off her all night. And the next day the tournament was only secondary in my mind, compared to her. I spent all day trying to be with her, hardly thinking about the tennis.
Does her family approve of the two of you going together?
Schwarzenegger: We never had any problems with that.
Do you get along well with her father, Sargent Shriver?
Schwarzenegger: Extremely well. Her father is one of the smartest persons I’ve ever met. He is so well educated, so well read, with so much information stored up in his mind. He just inhales books. It’s interesting to see the two different types of upbringings, the one I had and the one Maria and her brothers had.
Are you involved in a relationship that couldn’t happen in Europe? Over there would someone from a small village be mixing with the aristocracy?
Schwarzenegger: It could happen there as well. You see, in Austria titles are the most important thing. So if you should win a title like being the number-one car racer or the number-one skier, you will most likely end up sitting at the dinner table with the president of Austria. But the Shriver family doesn’t pay much attention to titles. In the past Maria has probably brought home boyfriends with no titles or anything, and they were well received by the family. They’re just a very open-minded, liberal family.
“They’re thinking about letting Sirhan Sirhan out of prison soon. The whole system sucks. For a guy like that, the punishment should be immediate death.”
Were you uncomfortable the first time Maria took you home?
Schwarzenegger: I felt like I was going into the unknown. She invited me, but I didn’t know if it was all right with the family. But when I got there, I felt welcomed.
You’re not used to doing things over which you have no control.
Schwarzenegger: That’s true, but that sort of experience makes me grow. Going to Hyannisport with Maria was a wonderful experience. We had two great days of waterskiing, tennis, and just getting to know people. Rose Kennedy was great. She speaks perfect German; so we spent the whole weekend talking to each other in my native tongue. We went for several long walks together and talked about Austria at length. The odd thing was that she knew everything about my country. Music, art, opera, books, even history! I was on my toes every second with her, and I found that the whole family was that way. They all participate in discussions around the dinner table on every conceivable subject, with Sargent as the encyclopedia to answer any questions nobody else gets.
Do you and Maria clash over your differing political views?
Schwarzenegger: We have a great time with her being a liberal Democrat and me basically being a conservative Republican, though I have some liberal ideas as well. We have a humorous, spicy relationship where we discuss things, respecting each other’s views. If she goes to a fundraiser for Teddy Kennedy or is doing other things that I would not do myself, I help her out, and she does the same for me.
Have your political ideas and ideals changed since you moved to America?
Schwarzenegger: I was always to the right; so Austria was too socialistic for me, although that system works pretty well in a small country, and Bruno Kreisky has always done a good job. But Austria was limited for me, because if you wanted to go into business, government regulations got in the way and their taxes take too big a chunk of the profits. That’s why I looked forward to going to America. Here you still keep a big chunk of your profits and only pay a fair share of taxes. That’s a good conservative Republican viewpoint: less regulations, less taxes, more freedom for the individual businessman.
When you were growing up, did you have fantasies about America?
Schwarzenegger: The things I read were always about this big, wealthy country, with a lot of energy, big factories, rich people, and big cars. Everything was big, big, big! That made me want to come here. I had no patience for the little cars in Europe or the little houses with their little gardens. I wanted everything to be huge. And, actually, when I think about it, everything has been almost better than I expected. America is the land of opportunity, where anybody can make it.
What was the biggest problem you had in adjusting to life in the United States?
Schwarzenegger: I just couldn’t handle getting used to the low speed limit. I’m used to driving fast and love fast cars. It’s such a waste to drive like a grandfather. That’s one of the things I will never forgive Nixon for doing, imposing the nationwide fifty-five-mile speed limit, regardless of whether you’re driving 300 miles out in Nevada without a turn in the road.
You must be pleased that America’s political pendulum has swung sharply to the right again.
Schwarzenegger: The Adam Smith theory of “the invisible hand” is finally in again, with government control relaxing and with being able to operate freely. Strong central government control worked well to get us out of the depression, but now it stifles growth. Socialism has spread too fast in America, with the Democrats being in all the time. And when people are pushed too much, they go in the opposite extreme in reaction. It’s up to the people in control to make their ideas work effectively. But if they can’t, then of course the power will shift back again. That’s the way it always goes.
What are your feelings regarding freedom of the press?
Schwarzenegger: Sometimes it gets carried away at the expense of the country. I’m very sensitive about this, because when I lived in Germany I occasionally listened to the East German radio. They don’t quote their own journalists; they only quote American and Western journalists and use your material against you. Like how money corrupts people, how the American political system doesn’t work, and how Watergate was covered up and how Nixon was involved. So when I came to America and saw the bad things that were written about the politicians, the system, and the country, I got very sensitive about it. Because I know where these stories are going to end up after the Washington Post and the New York Times. If there’s a problem within a political system, I feel it should be solved in the same way as a problem within a marriage: in the privacy of your own four walls. You don’t go out and tell all your neighbors and the press and everybody. Internal problems should be solved internally and not be blown out of proportion.
But Watergate would not have been exposed had it not been for two investigative journalists.
Schwarzenegger: Well, I question that. Eventually everything would have come out.
But the fact that it led back to the president of the United States, despite consistent denials of any wrongdoings from the White House, stressed the importance of investigative work.
Schwarzenegger: To me it was more important that the situation was resolved through political institutions. There was a prosecutor and a Senate Watergate investigative committee.
And Archibald Cox was tossed out when he dug too deep.
Schwarzenegger: The press couldn’t stop Cox from being fired. He was fired, and that was the end of it. And the coverage of the Watergate hearings was overdone. And the country didn’t profit from it. All I could imagine was the Russians videotaping the whole thing for their own propaganda purposes.
Do you believe in capital punishment?
Schwarzenegger: All the crime that is committed in America, including assassination attempts, leads back to the basic fact that we have too liberal a legal system. I mean, they’re thinking about letting Sirhan Sirhan out of prison soon. Can you imagine the guy who killed Robert Kennedy running around the streets? The whole system sucks. For a guy like that, the punishment should be immediate death. It’s the most valid system to prevent someone from committing the same crime again. Intellectuals try to justify the present system by saying that many criminals are influenced by poor home environments and bad upbringing, but so what? The bottom line is that a cold-blooded killer does not fit into society. He has shown it. He has killed people. So therefore he cannot be part of society. I’m not alone in my feelings. Many states have already reinstated capital punishment, having been convinced that no other threat works as effectively.
During part of the time you lived in Munich, around 1968, you were a bully and got into a lot of fights. Was this just for fun?
Schwarzenegger: Sure. I was nineteen or twenty and was into testing myself through fights, especially when I had trained and felt good and strong. I felt I was the king wherever I went. Munich is a wonderful place for being into that sort of immature behavior, because people are drunk there a lot. People start fights all the time in beer halls; then two minutes later you are drinking together as if nothing had happened. There was no thinking involved; I just trained four hours a day, ate like an animal, and acted like a gladiator. My self-image at the time was to be huge and strong and live like an animal. No one wanted to kill anyone, though chairs were thrown around half of the time, where you could have been killed. But the major weapon was the beer mug. People sat there holding their mugs and arguing, and you knew that they were holding them for a reason. There was a certain way of sitting at a table so you wouldn’t get a beer mug in the face.
“I thought all these girls backstage just worked there, oiling guys up. Believe me, there was a time when I was that naive!”
When did this fighting stop?
Schwarzenegger: In America, because I realized I was a guest here. I tried to act differently, thinking about things and avoiding fights, acquiring a better image. I grew up.
Did you ever lose a fight?
Schwarzenegger: No.
Is that because you were bigger or because you outfought them?
Schwarzenegger: Outfought them or stopped the possibility of a fight before-hand. A lot of times people get intimidated by size; so even if you were the one who started the fight, all of a sudden they realized what they were up against and said, “Hey, buddy, how about a beer?”
Have people tried to pick fights with you in the U.S.?
Schwarzenegger: Never. I rarely see bar fights here. I think people are more peaceful than in Europe. The only thing you have to watch out for here are people on drugs. Even then, they don’t fight. They get carried away with guns, shooting people down without thinking about it.
Does this mean you favor gun control?
Schwarzenegger: No. Because that forbids law-abiding citizens from owning guns but doesn’t stop the criminals, who can always buy them on the black market. Also, there have never been valid statistics to prove that gun control has worked. There are gun-control laws in Austria and Germany, but more people have guns there than you can imagine. You can get them everywhere on the black market. Gun control isn’t the answer. Stiffer punishments are the answer.
When you first entered competition, were there large cash prizes given in body building?
Schwarzenegger: When I first won the Mr. Olympia contest in 1970, the Super Bowl of body building, they only gave $1,000, and six years later, when I won in South Africa for the sixth time, the prize had only gone up to $1,500. It was then that I decided I would stop competing and produce the Mr. Olympia contest myself, figuring out a formula that would allow much heavier cash prizes, up to $50,000. I involved sponsors, sold advertising space, raised the admission price, and sold tickets to the prejudging. In all the different competitions, worldwide, over $200,000 is now given, compared to just $1,500 only six years ago.
Has the increase in prize money changed the sport?
Schwarzenegger: Yes, though I wasn’t aware that that would be the case. It corrupted and screwed up the sport a little bit. As a result, body building is now suffering the same symptoms every sport does that turns professional. It’s caused conflicts, jealousies, and a loss of the camaraderie that used to be there when we trained. It used to be just you out there. Now it’s you and your potential income for the next year. As soon as big money is involved, like in the baseball strike, people forget about the fans and the sport and only think about the financial gains. But I think body building will survive this stage and normalize in five years, with a financial system worked out where body builders will be able to relax about the money.
How many body builders make a living out of the sport?
Schwarzenegger: There are only fifteen or twenty professionals who make a living solely from body building. This is compared to the hundreds of thousands who are training three or four hours a day with the goal of competing in the competitions.
How important are the psychological-warfare aspects of body-building competition?
Schwarzenegger: After having your body in perfect condition, it’s the most important thing, although most competitors don’t use it well.
How did you used to psych out your opponents?
Schwarzenegger: It was a certain attitude I took, sometimes starting months before a competition. I’d have my training partner call my opponent and say, “Gee, I just saw· Arnold, and he looks huge and very defined. Maybe it would be better if you didn’t compete.” This way the other guy might have a week of sleepless nights, which took away from his training process. Or, like in 1975, I planned to weigh in very light, just 228 instead of the 245 I was the year before. This was because I knew that Lou Ferrigno, who is much bigger than I am, was going to compete against me. It would have been a mistake to compete on his level; so I decided to come in much leaner and more defined than he would. But I told him the opposite by having people go back to New York and tell him, “Arnold is going past two fifty-six now.” Lou said, “Oh, my God, I have to gain weight, too.” So when we stood on stage, it was a clear indication that I was tuned in and he was not.
Did you do this with many competitors?
Schwarzenegger: Sure. It helps to have an understanding of psychology, which I studied a bit, and to know how people react. Like the last Mr. Olympia contest that I competed in, in Sydney, Australia, in 1980. There was a guy named Mike Menzer, who’s very nervous and uptight. And the more nervous and uptight he gets, the more he loses control over his posing. One day we were sitting in a judges’ meeting, trying to decide whether we should have two weight classes.
Mike said, “I feel we should not have two classes, because that’s why I lost last year. I never had a chance to pose against Frank Zane.”
So I got up and said, “I think Mike Menzer is totally wrong in this case. I think he lost because he had a huge stomach, and it was hanging out all over the stage.”
He blew up and jumped toward me, shouting, “I can act like a man!”
Like he was coming to fight. Well, from then on, every time he walked by me, his whole body started shaking. And when we went on stage, he just stood there with his stomach hanging out. Every time I winked at him, he would forget to flex properly and he placed fifth, although he could have placed higher.
So you had different strategies for each opponent?
Schwarzenegger: Exactly. Like I knew Frank Zane would be tense at the moment of the competition, because he hadn’t laughed once in the last six weeks. So if I could crack him up with a good joke, all the laughter that he had stored up would come out in a torrent. So I prepared a joke and told it to him during the prejudging. He cracked up so much that he leaned back and bent over. And of course the judges are always looking and making notes. They probably thought, “He is not taking this seriously.” After five years away from competition it was wonderful to use psychological warfare again.
How present is homosexuality in body building?
Schwarzenegger: In my whole career I’ve seen only two or three in competition. Of course, there are more of them training in gymnasiums, but it’s hard to say who is and who isn’t gay. I’m not looking for them, and I don’t have a negative attitude toward them. There are some body builders who are really uptight about it and just go crazy when they see one. But there’s nothing bad about being a homosexual, and if he gets off on going to a body-building gym to watch us work out, I can relate to it. A few years ago I would have been in heaven going to a woman’s gym and seeing them in some sexy, bent-over position, doing a rowing exercise.
Have you ever been propositioned while in training or during competitions?
Schwarzenegger: I used to be approached much, much more in the beginning. Maybe they can’t relate to me any more. When I moved to America, I was propositioned every so often at competitions by men and women who wanted to have sex with me. I got offered enormous sums of money, and so did other body builders. In fact, it became kind of a joking competition in the gym where I worked out. One guy would say, “Can you beat this one? I was offered a thousand dollars today.” Then another guy would answer, “That’s nothing. I was offered a thousand and an airline ticket.”
Were you ever tempted to accept a rich woman’s offer?
Schwarzenegger: That idea just grossed me out. I’m not a gigolo by nature.
Are there body-building groupies?
Schwarzenegger: Sure. There are many. When I went to my first competition in Germany in 1965 and the whole thing was new to me, I thought all these girls backstage just worked there, oiling guys up. Believe me, there was a time when I was that naive! But as the sport has become more legitimized, the groupie thing has declined.
Women’s body building is in its early stages but is growing fast. Are they judged the same as men?
Schwarzenegger: Women should be judged on muscles. If they want to do a sport like the man does, then the sport shouldn’t be altered. Of course, a woman’s body cannot carry as much muscle mass as a man’s, and it wouldn’t look proper, but it should be judged the same way: on muscularity, proportions, and the posing routine. There are men who say, “Well, this doesn’t look sexy or attractive.” My answer is that in a sport we don’t look for being sexy and attractive. Male and female shot-putters use the same technique and have the same rules. The only difference is that the women use a lighter ball. From hammer throwing to running and swimming, no sport is altered for women. So why begin here?
We talked about homosexuality in body building. I imagine some people think that any woman who gets into it is going to be gay.
Schwarzenegger: Only in America, where people have such hang-ups about sex. You have to understand that American psychology is built on making you feel guilty or having emotional problems. No matter what move you make in America, the whole department of psychology has made a campaign to make everybody feel like they ought to run to a shrink. It was never a surprise to me that they thought of body builders as being homosexual or weird or being closet queens, or now that women are getting into it, that they must be sexually weird or dykes or lesbians. It would never dawn on me, if somebody does a unique sport or activity, to immediately say, “Sexual problem. Obvious.”
Has your sense of humor ever deserted you?
Schwarzenegger: Sometimes something else takes over. In 1968 I lost a competition to Frank Zane. It was the first time I ever came to America, and I didn’t speak the language, and I was confused. It was the first time I ever lost, and I spent a lot of hours crying that night, with no control over it. I felt so far from home and lost. I’d always been told that only girls cried, but believe me, it was wonderful. It was very dark, and in the middle of the night, and nobody was watching! If people had been around, I would have said, “Losing? Hmm. A piece of cake!” I would have faked it through. No man wants to cry in public, and I probably still have that in me. But alone in the dark it was a great release.
What was the most difficult part of making the transition from body building to acting?
Schwarzenegger: Knowing I wouldn’t be the best. Stepping away from being the champion for so long and walking into an acting studio and feeling like a beginner. It was an incredible adjustment to make, but it also gave me a lot of inspiration to work my way up to the top in another field.
What are the professional hazards of show business?
Schwarzenegger: There are physical and mental hazards. In one scene of Conan, for instance, I had to fight a giant snake that the special-effects department had made and operated using hydraulic power. It was so powerful it could lift five of me easily. The scene called for the snake to slam me against the wall. And if the guy who operated it had made a slight mistake, I would have been smeared against the wall rather than walking away from it. But worse than the physical hazards are the psychological ones. Your ego is built up and knocked down again· and again, like a jack-in-the-box. You’re a star one day and a nobody the next. And if you’re not prepared to handle it, you can find yourself an alcoholic, a drug addict, or in an asylum.
When did you start training for Conan?
Schwarzenegger: Well, my mind was on it almost four years ago, and I began taking sword-training lessons over a year before we started shooting. I learned a number of styles, using wooden swords, axes, heavy swords, and short swords, and I studied a number of the martial arts. I had a number of teachers, each of whom taught me something different, but the one who was really responsible for most of my sword training was a Japanese martial-arts master named Yamasaki. [John] Milius [the film’s writer-director] wanted me to reshape my body as well so I’d look less like a body builder and more like a muscular man who had developed as a result of his work and battles. So I worked out a daily regimen through the spring and summer of 1980 where I would run four miles, then go to the beach and swim a mile, then run over to the gym and work out for an hour with weights or do gymnastics.
Everyone on the set was trading stories about how tough it was to shoot Conan in the north of Spain, in Madrid and Segovia, saying that on some days it was colder on the unheated interior sets than it was outside.
Schwarzenegger: It was definitely below freezing, both inside and outside, in Madrid. We were painted in body camouflage the whole day, running around with our upper bodies naked. And when we finished shooting at night and went to take showers to wash off the paint, the showers were frozen! There was no hot water, and even the cold water was limited. It became a torturous experience, being cold and painted and sweaty the whole day. My eyes were painted, and I had a wig on and couldn’t move the way I wanted to. I couldn’t lie down in my trailer, because the paint would have gotten all over the bed. And at the lunch break I couldn’t wash the paint off my hands, or the continuity would have been lost. So I ate outside, where it was freezing cold. It was a really rough situation. When I was in front of the cameras, I didn’t think about it, because I was able to get into the character of Conan. But when the cameras stopped rolling, it was rough. I had to go back to thinking of myself as a gladiator again, just like when I started body building and I used to work out at home in Austria in an unheated room in the winter.
What are your goals in acting?
Schwarzenegger: I want to get to the top in this field. I don’t see myself as a James Earl Jones or a Max von Sydow, because that takes a whole different approach to acting than I have. They’re the true masters of it. But I see myself more as a Clint Eastwood or Burt Reynolds, who do it with a combination of acting, personality, style, and appearance. I visualize myself doing a lot of heroic roles, leading parts. I would not do anything else, because I just cannot function well by being a supporting player. I realize that may be a shortcoming, but my ego wouldn’t allow it.
Does Arnold Schwarzenegger ever have particular and memorable sexual fantasies?
Schwarzenegger: I sometimes talk about this with friends, and they say, “Oh, I wish I could do this and that.” I think the reason I don’t fantasize about sex is that I just live my fantasies.
What do you fantasize about for your future?
Schwarzenegger: Getting as big and as good as possible in acting, making top dollar, working with the best directors and doing more heroic adventure films, and eventually getting into producing pictures. I see it the same way I changed in body building: moving from the spotlight to behind the scenes, controlling the production instead of starring in it. I’ll continue to write inspirational books on physical fitness and also try to keep up my educational process. I have an enormous hunger for learning. Knowledge is a great tool if it is used properly, and if I’m to continue to grow, mentally, financially, and professionally, I have to constantly absorb information.
Since Arnold talks a tad disparagingly about American Sexuality, we thought we might remind about what teenagers thought at the time — also 40 years ago as of this publication.
