In a new YouTube video, Arnold Schwarzenegger has revealed how close he came to death just a few months before he began filming 2019’s Terminator: Dark Fate. He had open-heart surgery for the third time, but on this occasion, something went badly wrong – leading to a long recovery.
“I was really freaking out because I woke up and all of a sudden the doctors were in front of me saying, ‘I’m so sorry but it was unlike what we planned, which was non-invasive surgery. We made a mistake and poked through the heart wall, therefore there was internal bleeding. Therefore, we had to open you up very quickly to save your life.'” Arnold Schwarzenegger explains in the video.
“The bottom line is, you cannot roll the clock back. It was a disaster. I was in the middle of a disaster. So now how do I get out of it? You have to shift gears. You collect yourself, shift gears and say, ‘OK, what I need to do now is: I’ve got to get out of this hospital.'”
Schwarzenegger described starting to walk a few steps and then progressing from there; “I looked like an idiot waddling around the hallway, but the bottom line was the doctor said you have to exercise your lungs because if you get pneumonia you can die. We did it, because I had a positive attitude and the support system … [Three months later] I started shooting Terminator 6.” Dark Fate isn’t exactly one of the best Arnold Schwarzenegger movies, but it probably aided his recovery by giving him something to aim for.
Schwarzenegger understandably didn’t do much movie work after Dark Fate, but in 2023 he has turned to television with the Netflix comedy thriller series FUBAR, as well as a Netflix documentary about his life. His career-long rival Sylvester Stallone responded with his own Netflix documentary which will be released on November 3, 2023, which shows that their one-upmanship still isn’t over.
Check out our guide to the Terminator movies in order and to the best action movies. Check out everything new on Netflix too.