Featured Image Credit: YouTube/Team Coco
Topics: Arnold Schwarzenegger, Celebrity, Film and TV
Callum Jones
Topics: Arnold Schwarzenegger, Celebrity, Film and TV
There is no question that Arnold Schwarzenegger is one of the greatest actors of all time, so it's hard to imagine Hollywood without him.
From Terminator to Commando and Predator, it is no wonder that the 76-year-old is loved by millions across the globe.
Schwarzenegger really was the name you thought of when it came to films in the 1980s, but that nearly wasn't the case.
Advert
That is because the actor has revealed that studio executives weren't impressed by him when he first tried to make it as an actor back in the 1970s.
Speaking on the Literally! With Rob Lowe podcast on Thursday (12 October), Anrnie revealed: "In the '70s when I said I wanted to get into movies, all the producers and directors and studio executives and agents were saying to me, 'It's never gonna happen.' And one of the three reasons was that my body was too big."
Of course, there were a lot of famous actors at that time doing great things, Robert De Niro, Dustin Hoffman, and Al Pacino, just to name a few.
Schwarzenegger said that movie executives at the time compared him to other successful actors of that era, so didn't exactly see a place for him in Hollywood.
"They said to me, 'Look at the stars today. Dustin Hoffman, Al Pacino, De Niro, Woody Allen. Those are the sex symbols. People don't want to see big muscles. You're 100 pounds too heavy. Forget it," he recalled on the podcast.
Not only that, but Schwarzenegger said that many higher-ups in the industry criticized his accent.
He continued: "The bottom line is that when they said, 'It's not gonna work, you getting in the movies, and especially not being a leading man,'" he said. "They said it was 'because of your accent.' They said the German accent is scary for most Americans — it reminds them of the Nazis. 'Yes, you could play a Nazi officer or something like that.'
"And then they said that, 'No one would be able to pronounce Schwarz... And what's your name? Schnitzel?' So they were laughing at my name. And they said that they're three reasons why it wouldn't work."
In other Arnie news, the Terminator actor recently documented his comeback from open-heart surgery after nearly losing his life.
After having the surgery, he spoke about taking small steps (literally) to walk around the hospital, before welcoming a few friends to his bedside to 'fire him up'.