Arnold Schwarzenegger and his son, Patrick Schwarzenegger, recently looked back on their strikingly similar acting decisions when it comes to nudity.
During a chat for Variety’s Actors on Actors series, the father-son pair discussed their choices to go nude on screen. The elder Schwarzenegger brought up his breakout role in the 1984 sci-fi hit The Terminator, pointing out it was his first movie where he moved away from displaying his bodybuilding background.
“I was doing the Conan movies, and this is exactly what my dream was when I was a kid. You wanted to get into acting because of acting; I wanted to get into it because I saw Hercules on a big screen,” Arnold explained. “I started training and said to myself, ‘I will become Mr. Universe, and I will be getting into movies because of my fame.'”
He added, “Terminator was the first time that I was doing a film that had nothing to do with the muscles. It was with leather jackets on and being a machine. Only the opening scene was naked. But I’m talking about naked.”
Patrick shared that he also decided to strip down for a role — playing Saxon Ratliff in the third season of HBO’s The White Lotus. “I’ve done it,” he told his father.
Arnold then remembered watching the show and being shocked by his son’s scene: “I couldn’t believe [it]. I said to myself, ‘I’m watching your show, and I’m watching your butt sticking out there.’ And all of a sudden, I see the weenie. What is going on here? This is crazy. Then I said to myself, ‘Well, Arnold, hello. You did the same thing in Conan and Terminator, so don’t complain about it.’ But it was a shock to me that you were following my footsteps so closely.”
Patrick, who had previously discussed the moment with Men’s Health, emphasized that the choice was entirely his. “When we were shooting the bedroom scene, they had some boxer-briefs that I was supposed to wear, and I was like, ‘I’m just going to do this naked.'”
