Arnold Schwarzenegger has said that he used an “accent-removal coach” during the early stages of his career.
Appearing on last night’s (October 27) Graham Norton Show, Schwarzenegger said he had a coach during his early career to remove his famous Austrian accent.
“I had an English coach, an acting coach, a speech coach, and an accent-removal coach,” the actor told Norton. He then explained that his accent-coach “has passed away since,” but then joked: “I should have otherwise gotten my money back.”
Schwarzenegger explained how the trainer’s process did help him, although not as intended. “It was very helpful [for enunciation],” he told Norton, “but it didn’t get rid of my accent!”
Schwarzenegger went on to say his accent played a big part in him getting a part in his two biggest movies, Conan the Barbarian and Terminator. He recalled a story in which John Milius, the director of Conan, told the press: “If we wouldn’t have had Schwarzenegger, we would’ve had to build one.”
He also said: “Jim Cameron said what made Terminator work, and what made it successful, is that Schwarzenegger talks like a machine.”
Elsewhere in the interview, Schwarzenegger admitted that his rivalry with Sylvester Stallone got “out of control” when they started to “derail each other”.
Schwarzenegger admitted that they would compete against each other in their various action films and would attack each other in the press.
The pair later became friends after collaborating on projects together, including film franchise The Expendables and 2013’s Escape Plan. Schwarzenegger went on to say they are now “inseparable”.
Schwarzenegger said: “We were movie rivals, but we took the competitiveness to the extreme – we each had to have the best body, we had to kill more people in our films, and we had to have the biggest guns.
“It got out of control, and we tried to derail each other. Then, when we both invested in Planet Hollywood, we started flying around the world together to promote it and we became fantastic friends. He is a great human being, and we are now inseparable.”
In other news, earlier this year, Schwarzenegger said that he would run for US president if he could, saying that he could “see so clearly” how he would win.