Total Recall: My Unbelievably True Life Story

by Arnold Schwarzenegger

  Hollywood is the town of copying. Now that I’d added a comedy dimension to my career, everybody started sending me comedy scripts in addition to scripts for action movies. More important, thanks to our unprecedented deal with Universal, I ended up making more money with Twins than I have with any of my Terminator movies. It didn’t take studios long to draw the line. Today nobody can come close to a deal as open ended as the one we had on Twins.

  Counting international sales, video rights, and so on, Twins has been worth more than $35 million to me alone—and counting, because the DVDs keep selling and it keeps being shown on TV. For twenty-five years I’ve been trying to convince Universal to do a sequel. It would be called Triplets, and Eddie Murphy, whom I love and admire, would play our unknown other brother. Just recently at the Polo Lounge at the Beverly Hills Hotel we agreed to fast-track the project, and now Triplets is on the way.

  —

  As my success grew, Sarge was always challenging me to do more for the public good. “Arnold,” he would say, “your movies and your acting are great. Now tell me: how many times do you want to do another car chase?” He didn’t know anything about the entertainment business. In 1978, for the premiere of the first Superman movie, he and Eunice hosted a Special Olympics fund-raiser in a big tent at their house. Seated next to Sarge at the head table was none other than Superman himself, Christopher Reeve.

  “What do you do?” Sarge asked him.

  “I’m in the movie. I play Superman.”

  “That’s fantastic! Superman!” exclaimed Sarge. “But you know, I think it’s more interesting that we have supermen in real life.” There was a side of him that wanted to be diplomatic and respectful but also another side that couldn’t understand how anyone could waste all those hours wearing costumes and makeup. Sarge never read the entertainment pages.

  “How many people do you save when you look good on the set?” he’d ask me. He’d tease me about how I’d been awed by James Earl Jones during the making of Conan. “You told me James Earl Jones was in the middle of a speech and forgot his line and how professional he was, how he held his gesture and his pose and said, ‘Give me the line, guys, give me the line.’ And the next line was ‘I am the wellspring, from which you flow,’ and then he said, ‘Oh, yeah . . . I am the wellspring, from which you flow.’

  “So is that what’s important to you? To be able to freeze in the middle of a scene and to have somebody give you your line? Wouldn’t it be much better to go through Africa and show them how to dig wells and how to make vegetables grow and inspire them to plant?”

  It was a collision of worlds, but I didn’t disagree entirely. Acting went only so far in terms of real accomplishment. Still, I felt Sarge was hitting below the belt. I was only trying to explain why I admired James Earl Jones. I got him back a year later. He was telling me about traveling with Armand Hammer to make oil deals in Russia after Sarge went back to the private practice of law. He described hanging out at night with Russian oil experts. “You have no idea what great vodka they have,” Sarge said.

  “Is that what you really admire?” I asked. “Is that what your life is all about? That you have the best vodka?”

  “No, no, no! We made a huge deal.”

  “I’m just joking. Remember when you said to me about acting, ‘Is that all you care about, being able to freeze in the middle of a scene and ask for a line?’ ”

  “I get it, I get it,” Sarge admitted.

  Public service accounted for a lot of the conversation in his and Eunice’s house. “Arnold, you have such an unbelievable personality,” they’d tell me. “Imagine using all of what God gave you to reach out and pump up other people: the Special Olympians, the homeless, the sick, the returning military. It almost makes no difference which cause you pick. You would bring such a spotlight because of your energy and your stardom.”

  I was already on a crusade around the world to promote health and fitness to young people. I’d stepped up my commitment to the Special Olympics so that now I was the US national coach of power lifting, regularly conducting seminars and making appearances all over the country. And with my growing popularity as a movie star, I was ready to take on more.

  “What else can I do?” I asked Sarge and Eunice. They had plenty of ideas. Eunice was a constant inspiration. What she’d accomplished, to my mind, was larger than the work of most mayors, governors, senators, and even presidents. Not only did she expand the Special Olympics to encompass more than 175 countries, but she also changed people’s thinking around the world. Many nations viewed the mentally challenged as a drag on society or a danger to themselves, to be treated as outcasts or warehoused in mental institutions. Eunice used her name and her influence to free those people to have regular lives and the same social benefits as other citizens. It was a tough challenge, because governments didn’t want to be told they were doing something wrong. They felt embarrassed when Eunice Kennedy Shriver would show up and put the spotlight on the institutions where the mentally disabled were locked up. But one by one, the nations came around—even China, which eventually overcame centuries of social prejudice to host the International Special Olympics Games in 2007. Those were the biggest games in the history of the movement. There were eighty thousand people in the stadium, and the president of China came. I was there too, leading the American team in the opening ceremony.

  After the 1988 election, I’d sent word to the president-elect reiterating my interest in the President’s Council on Physical Fitness and Sports. I said that I hoped he would consider me when he turned to other appointments after building his cabinet. If he needed help on the fitness council, I’d be more than happy to come in and share my vision. Bush’s staff, of course, was aware of my passion for promoting health and fitness for youngsters. Eunice sent a letter recommending me for the job and pointing out that I was “the number one star” in the United States. The president responded, thanking her for “recommending our man Conan.”

  At present, though, she was much more focused on the production of grandchildren. Eunice had become very concerned when Maria and I didn’t have kids right away. We’d been married now for almost three years. She kept saying to Maria, “Why don’t you have kids?” and Maria kept saying, “I have my job; it doesn’t fit in yet. And Arnold is too busy; he’s always on sets.” And so on. Those obstacles were real. Maria had become one of the top personalities of NBC News. Not only was she coanchor of the Sunday Today show and Main Street, NBC’s award-winning monthly newsmagazine for young people, but also she anchored the weekend news and was a regular stand-in for Tom Brokaw on the NBC Nightly News and other news programs. All of these shows were based in New York. In summer 1988 Maria had won an Emmy as coanchor of NBC’s coverage of the Olympics in Seoul, South Korea. She was making well over $1 million a year and traveling all the time—hardly the right circumstances for becoming a mom.

  But her mother felt, “No, there has to be another reason. Maybe they’re having problems getting pregnant.” So Eunice started looking into the effects of steroids on male reproduction. She never talked to me about it, but she sent Maria a five-page scientific briefing by one of the doctors connected to the Special Olympics. I could visualize exactly how it had come about. Eunice had done what she always did, which was to go to her office and say, “Get me an expert to help with this issue” or “Get me someone to write this speech” or “Get me the White House on the phone.”

  It was a very thorough report, custom written for Maria. It explained that if you have sex regularly and you’re trying to get pregnant but you don’t, there are many possible reasons, but one might be if your husband has used or abused steroids. Then it went into explaining everything medically.

  I just happened to see the report on Maria’s desk, so I read it, and I was laughing my head off. I said, “Your mother is out of control.”

  “I know, I know,” Maria said. She was laughing too. “Can you believe that? I have to calm her down.”

  It was typical for E
unice to try to plant herself in the middle of the action. I used to joke that she wanted to sleep between us in bed on our honeymoon in order to supervise. In the Kennedy family, this wasn’t completely far fetched: the legend was that when Eunice and Sarge went on their honeymoon to France, they arrived at the hotel to discover Teddy in the lobby. Joe had sent him as a chaperone.

  Apart from all this, however, Maria did hear the ticking of the biological clock. She had just turned thirty-three, a year older than Eunice had been when she and Sarge had their first baby. So in 1989, we decided to get going, and Maria became pregnant with Katherine.

  I was back in action-hero mode that spring, making Total Recall, but fatherhood was never far from my mind. One day in my trailer, wading through scripts, I came across a draft of Kindergarten Cop. I couldn’t put it down; the idea of a tough detective who has to go undercover teaching a bunch of preschoolers made me laugh. People in Hollywood always said, “Never act with kids or animals. They’re impossible to work with, and then they look so cute onscreen that they steal the show.” I’d already had experience with animals as Conan, and they’d been fine. But I’d been interested in doing a movie with kids for years, and the prospect of becoming a dad inspired me. I thought, “Great! Let the kids steal the show. As long as the movie succeeds.” I called to make sure the script was available. Then I asked Ivan Reitman if he’d direct me again. We both wanted changes in the script to add social relevance: I wanted to add a physical fitness theme, and he wanted it to touch on broken homes, child abuse, and family life. But we agreed to go ahead. Since Ivan already had Ghostbusters II in the works for the 1989 holidays, we started planning Kindergarten Cop for Christmas 1990.

  CHAPTER 19

  The Real Life of a Terminator

  WHEN OUR FIRST BABY arrived in December 1989, I was right there in the delivery room with the video camera.

  “Hold it right there!”

  “No, we have to pull the baby out.”

  “No, no, wait. Just let me make sure I got the shot.” Those people in the delivery room probably have seen it all.

  Maria and I had made all the preparations that first-time parents make. As her due date neared, we had a Lamaze teacher come to the house. Of course, I did all that; as the father, you have to. You have to show extraordinary interest in the pregnancy and the childbirth and the afterbirth and cutting the cord and all that, unlike in my father’s world, where the guy was totally out of the picture. (Somebody made a video of me imitating our Lamaze class, and seeing that helped convince Ivan Reitman to do the movie Junior, in which I play a scientist who becomes pregnant as part of a scientific experiment.)

  The whole Lamaze thing was horrifying to both our mothers.

  “You’re down there helping pull out the baby?” my mother asked. “You’re videotaping her vagina? I’m sorry, this is too much for me.”

  Eunice’s reaction was more or less the same. “Good for you if it makes Maria happy. For myself, I wanted them to give me a shot and put me out. Sarge wasn’t allowed to come in for three days. And when he did come, I looked like a picture postcard, and the only thing different was the baby.”

  Seeing Katherine’s birth, I felt the most unbelievable joy. I said to myself, “Fuck! This is my first baby!” That’s the interesting thing about the human mind, that you can be so overwhelmed by something that billions of people in history have done. Of course, I took charge of the situation right away: working with the nurse to clean up the baby, bringing her over to get weighed, putting the little hat on her so she didn’t get cold, and putting on the little outfit and the diaper—and, naturally, taking endless photos and videos. Maria was crying for joy, and I stayed with her while she rested, and after awhile the nurse came in and showed us how to breast-feed. Whenever I heard guys say that they cried after their baby was born, I always thought, “That is such bullshit.” But sure enough, when I went home and called my friends about Katherine’s birth, I cried.

  Maria’s parents were in Washington, and my mom was in Austria. “We are not going to come until you invite us. This should be your moment together,” Sarge and Eunice had said. Maybe Maria told them to say that, I don’t know. But while childbirth was definitely not Eunice’s thing, Maria was her only daughter, and the next day, she was there. I didn’t mind; we’d had our private moment. Maria felt it was the first thing we’d done in a big way alone, without her mother interfering. She loved just the two of us going to the hospital.

  A dozen paparazzi were shooting from across the parking lot when we left the hospital the next night, but we got Katherine home, and then the whole drama of the adjustment began. Because from that moment on, your life as a couple has changed. Even after your kids leave home, you will still feel responsible. I had others to look after now: Maria and me, my mom, Katherine, and more children would follow. Maria always wanted to have five kids because she came from a family of five, while I preferred two because I came from a family of two. I thought we would settle somewhere in the middle.

  When Maria came home, and Sarge and Eunice arrived from Washington a day later, we tried to work out the rhythm of the breast-feeding and the diaper changing and the question of how the baby room should be decorated. Pretty quickly a nanny came into the picture, and I felt my importance kind of slipping away. Baby care became a dialogue between her and Maria. At first I didn’t pay much attention to this, but then I read something and also saw something on TV about “gatekeeping.” I said to myself, “Yes! That’s exactly what’s happening to me! I’m getting aced out, I can’t make a move that is right, everyone is always worried that I’m holding the baby the wrong way.” I decided I had to break through all that and have more fun with it.

  It must have been in some magazine I picked up in a doctor’s office, because normally I wasn’t into reading about how to take care of the baby. I felt that there were no magazines or books around in the Stone Age, and yet every schmuck took care of babies back then, so how wrong could you go? As long as you love the baby, you figure it out, just like with everything you love doing. Caring for babies is hardwired into the brain. I’ve sat on an airplane many times and felt startled by even the tiniest peep from a baby twenty rows back.

  In fact, I felt lucky, because Maria was a fabulous mother, which is not something you can necessarily tell about a person in advance. In spite of the gatekeeping, I admired how totally in control of the situation she was. I didn’t have to worry at all. She had the instincts, she had the knowledge, she’d studied enough books, and she worked closely with the nanny—there was no shortcoming there whatsoever, which I could see even as I was being pushed aside.

  Even so, I was determined that gatekeeping would not happen again. So a couple of years later, in July 1991, when we had Christina, I put my foot down from Day One. Not that I said, “No, you can’t tell me to leave the room anymore.” Instead, at night when we went to bed and when Maria finished breast-feeding Christina, I would take the baby from her immediately and put her on my chest. Christina would be kind of spread-eagled, with her hands and feet hanging off the sides. I don’t know who’d told me to do this; it was some guy who said, “I always put my baby on my chest.”

  “How can you sleep like that?” I asked him.

  “I don’t know. Somehow it works. I have no idea. Maybe I never slept that deeply, but it was okay because it was for the baby.”

  I said to myself, “Yes! That’s what I’m going to do.” I found that with Christina on my chest, I would sleep, but not so soundly that I would turn and roll over on top of her. Nature had built in that safeguard. I’d be lying there asleep, and all of a sudden I’d hear the baby making little stirring noises. I’d look over at the clock and see that four hours had passed. It was just like the nurse in the hospital had said: “You’ll need to breast-feed every four or five hours.” So I’d hand the baby to Maria, she’d breast-feed her again, and I’d take the baby back for a couple more hours of sleep.

  I was much more on top of the diaper si
tuation too. I started changing them right away and said to the women, “Now, girls, I totally failed with the first baby because for every hundred diapers Maria did, I did maybe one. That’s not fair. Not fair to the baby, not fair to you, not fair to me. I want to participate more this time.” I would just close the door, and lock it if they tried to hover.

  So I just moved right in there, boom, boom, boom, and did it. Within a week or two, I graduated to the level that when we heard the baby, I was allowed to go upstairs and change her diaper without anyone following me.

  “This is an enormous breakthrough,” I said to myself. It felt like heaven, being in the room alone, just looking at this little girl, with no one hanging over my shoulder, and changing the diaper. It calmed down Christina, and all of sudden she went back to sleep, and I felt like, “I did that!” It was such a great sense of accomplishment and great joy of participating.

  But then with our third baby, it was a battle again, because Patrick was the first boy. He had to be treated differently, “like a boy,” whatever that meant. We both were ecstatic, and I had not expected Maria to be that over-the-top ecstatic about the idea that it was a boy. She was really into being the force in his growing up. So, again, it was very hard at first to share parenting, but we did. And by the time Christopher, our second son, arrived in 1997, we were very good at the balancing act. When the boys come, instead of buying Barbie dolls, all of a sudden you’re into trucks and remote controls, cars and tanks. You buy building blocks and build castles and locomotives. You get into knives and later take them shooting with pistols, shotguns, and rifles. All of which made me very happy.

  —

  The birth of our daughters came just as I reached the stratosphere with my movie career. By Christmas 1990, a few weeks after Katherine’s first birthday, Time magazine put me on the cover as Hollywood’s top star and called me “at forty-three, the most potent symbol of worldwide dominance of the US entertainment industry.” Kindergarten Cop was in the theaters that holiday and was already a major hit.