Total Recall: My Unbelievably True Life Story

Even with all this going on, I could feel myself starting to get restless. It reminded me of the restlessness I’d felt after winning my third or fourth Mr. Olympia. All of a sudden the idea of having the most muscular body didn’t mean that much to me anymore. It was a phase I’d gone through and a means to an end: bodybuilding had brought me to America and launched me into the movies. But I grew out of that phase as much as I’d grown out of playing with little wooden trains as a kid. Of course, I always wanted to promote the sport of bodybuilding, and I wanted to promote fitness. But being the most muscular man didn’t mean anything to me anymore.

Becoming the biggest action star had been the next challenge. Eventually I’d accomplished that as well. Then I’d gone another step, into comedies. But I’d always known I’d grow out of that too.

In the seven years between the two Terminator movies, my feelings about the business had changed. Throughout the 1980s, I was enthusiastically grinding out the films. I was gunning for the top, trying to double my salary with every project and have the number one movie at the box office and be the biggest star. I literally hated having to sleep. When I did The Terminator, I dreamed of being able to operate nonstop like a machine. Then I could shoot all night on the set with Jim Cameron, and in the morning just change wardrobe and drive over and do a daytime movie on a daytime set with a daytime director. “Wouldn’t that be cool?” I thought. “I could do four movies a year!”

But now, after Terminator 2: Judgment Day, I saw things completely differently. I had a growing family. I wanted to have a nice life. I wanted to enjoy my wife and kids. I wanted to see Katherine and Christina grow up. I wanted to be able to go to events with them and take them on vacation. I wanted to be home when they came home from school.

So I tried to figure out how to balance my time. I thought that doing one movie a year might be the perfect pace. People now accepted the fact that I was one of the biggest stars, so I didn’t have to prove anything. But they were expecting more movies, so I had to make sure I came back and gave them good ones. If I heard an idea or saw a script that was exceptionally good and triggered something in me, I wanted to be able to make that movie. But there were other opportunities out there as well, and movie acting was no longer enough.

I thought that maybe the way to keep myself interested was to do what Clint Eastwood does and spice up the movie career with directing and producing every so often—sometimes appearing in the movie and sometimes not. And so on. I loved the idea of new challenges, along with new dangers of failure. Clint was one of the very few Hollywood personalities who had his head screwed on straight. He was good in business. He never lost money. He was wise in the ways he invested. He was always getting involved in ventures he felt passionate about, like his restaurant business and his golf businesses in Northern California. From the time I came to America, he was always someone I’d idolized. I didn’t know if I had that kind of talent, but maybe I could try to be like Clint when acting was no longer enough for me and I was looking for the next challenge.

Then there was a completely different path I could see myself taking. Clint had been elected mayor of Carmel, California, his hometown. That too appealed to me, although I did not know at that point which office I might seek one day. Still, I couldn’t help but feel influenced by being around the Shrivers and the Kennedy family, even though we were on different sides of the fence politically.

In November 1991 a surprise push in the direction of running for office came from Richard Nixon. He invited me to stop by his office before a fund-raiser and the opening of a holiday exhibit at his presidential library, scheduled a few hours after the opening of the Reagan library. I knew how Nixon was hated by many people, and I was aware of the Watergate scandal and the hardship it put the country through. Taking that out of the equation, however, I admired him and thought he was a terrific president. I suspect he knew I was a fan, because I’d praised him in the media even at the height of his unpopularity. I especially loved talking about him then because of the side of me that likes to be rebellious and shock people.

He’d told me on the phone when he invited me to his event, “I want you to enjoy it, Arnold.” In fact, he was setting me up to make a speech without telling me. So I agreed unsuspectingly and brought along my nephew Patrick, the son of my late brother and his fiancee, Erika Knapp. Patrick, now in his midtwenties, had graduated from the University of Southern California Law School and had been hired as an associate by my entertainment lawyer, Jake Bloom. I loved hanging out with him and teaching him the ropes. We went down and greeted President Nixon at the holiday opening, which drew about thirteen hundred people.

Nixon was very good at paying attention to you. He would get into your head, and I was impressed. He said, “Arnold, I want you to come into my office.”

“Can my nephew come in with us?”

“Oh, absolutely.” We walked into his office, and he closed the door and pumped me for information about all kinds of things: what was I doing, how was it going with the movies, what made me a Republican, why was I involved in politics. After answering, I told him what was in my gut: “I came to America because it’s the greatest place in the world, and I’m going to do everything I can to keep it the greatest place. For that to happen, we can’t have schmucks running for president or hanging out at the White House. We need good leaders, and we need to move the agenda forward and have it be the same in the states and the same in the cities. So I always want to make sure that I vote for the right person and that I campaign for the right person. I need to know what they stand for, how they’ve voted in the past, how did they represent their state, were they great leaders, and all those kinds of things.” I told him about the challenges facing California in the areas of health and education, based on what I’d learned as the fitness chairman. And I talked about the challenge of making the state more business friendly.

Then someone came in and said, “Mr. President, they’re almost ready for you.” So we stood up. He turned to me just before we went and said, “You must run for governor of California. If you run for governor, I’ll help you all the way.” That caught me by surprise because we hadn’t been talking about that at all. He was the first ever to mention it to me in a serious way.

He sent Patrick to take a seat but told me, “Stay up here; stand over near the podium.” There were others standing there as well, including Bob Hope and other celebrities, and I joined the group.

He then got in front of the microphone and started talking. The speech was good, relaxed, and I was impressed because he had no notes. He spoke eloquently about the library and its mission, certain things that he had accomplished in his life, certain policies that must continue, and so on. “And, of course, I have a great following here. You people are responsible for making this all happen, and I am very grateful for your support,” he said. “But now I want to bring someone up who is the future of this state and …”

I didn’t hear what he said after this because my heart was racing.

“Maybe he just wants to mention me,” I thought. But I knew he was about to ask me to speak. The two sides of my mind immediately started a debate. One was saying, “What the fuck? Jeez, I’m not ready for this,” and the other side was saying, “Man, President Nixon is talking about you. Be happy!”

I heard the president say, “Arnold, come on up here.” And there was huge applause.

So I stepped out in front of all those people and stood there shaking his hand. Then he whispered to me, but so that you could still hear it clearly over the microphone, “I think you should say a few words.”

Luckily, when you feel good about someone and you know specifically why, it is not difficult at all to speak from the heart. I didn’t miss a beat. I even made a joke of it. “Well, I always like to be called up for a speech without any prior notice, but thank you very much.” That got a little bit of a laugh. I went on and spoke for a few minutes about how I became a Republican. I told the story of seeing Nixon on television for the first time during the 1968 presidential campaign “when he was talking about supporting law enforcement!” A few people applauded. I said, “He was supporting the military, the Pentagon, military expansion, and America can be powerful only if you have a strong military.” More applause.

“And he was talking about building an economy that is a global economy. He was talking about eliminating tariffs and barriers to trade, and ultimately it is our prosperity we have to protect, not labor!” Still more applause. “I loved hearing all those lines from him. And coming from a socialist country, I especially liked hearing someone say get government off our back.” Applause and cheers.

“Therefore, I became a big fan of this man. I was a big supporter of his, and I’m here today because I’m still a big supporter of his. We need more leaders like him!” Now everyone was applauding and cheering. It was heaven.

Afterward, President Nixon took me back to his office and said, “Remember what I told you about running for governor.”

I figured that the idea of eventually ending up in politics was not that far fetched when someone like Nixon suggested it. But my sense of it was never so intense that I felt “this is definitely going to happen.” It was never