Actor Arnold Schwarzenegger has opened about his “tough” childhood in a new Netflix docu-series about his life.
Arnold covers Schwarzenegger’s acting and political career, featuring interviews with friends and co-stars. In the series, which premiered yesterday (June 7), he calls his father, who was a Nazi party official, a “tyrant”.
Speaking about his father, he says he suspected he had many mental health issues. “He was buried underneath buildings, rubble, for three days, and on top of that, they lost the war. They went home so depressed,” he explained. “Austria was a country of broken men. I think there were times where my father really struggled.”
He accused his father, Gustav, of having “schizophrenic behaviour,” leaving the actor and his late brother nervous as to whether they would get their “kind father” or his “drunk” alter ego. Schwarzenegger said the siblings were forced to “earn breakfast” and even “compete against each other.”
He continued: “He would scream at three in the morning and we would wake up and our hearts were pounding because we knew what that meant,” Schwarzenegger said. “He could, at any given time, strike my mother or go crazy. So there was this strange violence.”
His brother, Meinhard, died in a drunk driving accident and Schwarzenegger thinks his drinking issues were caused by his father’s behaviour towards them.
“The brutality that was at home, the beatings that we got from our parents sometimes — all of this I think he could not sustain…He was much more delicate of a person by nature.”
The actor also addressed past groping allegations in the new series.
Five days prior to the California governor election in 2003, which Schwarzenegger went onto win, the actor and politician was accused of groping by six women across three decades in a report published on the Los Angeles Times.
At the time, Schwarzenegger dismissed the allegations before later admitting he had “behaved badly” on film sets. “It is true that I was on rowdy movie sets and I have done things that were not right which I thought then was playful,” the actor said (via the Guardian).
“But now I recognise that I offended people,” he added. “Those people that I have offended. I want to say to them I am deeply sorry about that and I apologise because that’s not what I’m trying to do.”
In the upcoming three-part documentary series Arnold, Schwarzenegger addresses the scandal and admits his actions were “wrong”.
“My reaction in the beginning, I was kind of… defensive,” Schwarzenegger said (via Rolling Stone). “Today, I can look at it and kind of say, it doesn’t really matter what time it is. If it’s the Muscle Beach days of 40 years ago, or today, that this was wrong. It was bullshit. Forget all the excuses, it was wrong.”
The documentary comes after Schwarzenegger’s new Netflix action series Fubar, which represents his first time leading a scripted live-action TV series. The show also stars Monica Barbaro, Gabriel Luna, Jay Baruchel and Fortune Feimster.
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