Arnold Schwarzenegger reveals he hired an accent removal coach to land leading roles

Arnold Schwarzenegger was once told to do away with his thick Austrian accent if he wanted good parts and leading roles in films. What is now considered as a USP of the actor was once something that was said to ruin his career even before it took flight. Talking to host Graham Norton on his eponymous chat show, Arnold revealed that he once hired an accent removal coach to try and do away with his thick Austrian accent for good.

“I had an English coach and an acting coach and a speech coach and an accent-removal coach, who has passed away since then, but I should have otherwise gotten my money back,” said Arnold, remembering all he did at the time he was starting off in the world of acting.

He further added, “The bottom line is, I worked on it. I remember he’d say, ‘You know you always say s-ree. It’s three, with a T-H.’ So he had me say, ‘Three thousand three hundred and thirty-three and one-third,’ with the T-H and not with the S.”

Add WION as a Preferred Source

“The funny thing was all the stuff that they said, the Hollywood producers and the directors and all the geniuses were saying this was an obstacle for me to become a leading man, became an asset,” Schwarzenegger added, noting that career-defining roles in Conan the Barbarianand The Terminatorwere films in which people loved his accent.

“When I did Terminator, Jim Cameron said, ‘What made Terminator work and why it became successful is because Schwarzenegger talks like a machine,’” Schwarzenegger recalled.

There is currently a three-part Netflix documentary Arnold, now streaming.