Arnold Schwarzenegger says he should get a refund from the accent-removal coach he once had
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- Arnold Schwarzenegger says he should have gotten his money back from the accent-removal coach he once had.
- The action star reflected on the beginnings of his career in a new episode of "The Graham Norton Show."
- "The bottom line is, I worked on it," Schwarzenegger said, adding that his accent eventually "became an asset."
Arnold Schwarzenegger says he should have gotten his money back from the accent-removal coach that he once hired.
Although the "Terminator" star has a voice that's instantly recognizable now, he tried very hard to lose his accent when he was first starting out.
On a recent episode of "The Graham Norton Show," Schwarzenegger revealed he had multiple coaches to help him with his acting career.
"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 mean, I should have otherwise gotten my money back," Schwarzenegger said.
The actor said that he worked hard with all the coaching he received to improve his pronunciation.
"I remember he'd say, 'You know you always say 'sree.' 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,'" Schwarzenegger said.
He also recalled how he often mixed up 'F,' 'V,' and 'W.'
"We would say, 'This is a nice vine.' But it's actually 'wine,' right?" Schwarzenegger said. "So the guy had me say 'A fine wine grows on vine.'"
"I was saying things like that over and over again. It was very helpful, but it didn't get rid of my accent," the actor added.
But despite all the detractors, Schwarzenegger acknowledged that his accent eventually became "an asset."
"When I did 'Terminator,' Jim Cameron said, 'What made 'Terminator' work and why it became successful is because Schwarzenegger talks like a machine,'" Schwarzenegger said.
This is not the first time Schwarzenegger has discussed his accent.
Last week, the actor appeared on the "Fly on the Wall" podcast where he opened up about how the "Hans and Franz" sketches on "Saturday Night Live" helped others accept his accent.
"To me it was heaven, because you have to understand that when I first wanted to get into acting, one of the first things they said was, 'This won't work. No one in America has ever made it that had an accent,'" Schwarzenegger said on the podcast.
"But then out of nowhere, without me controlling it, they came along and they legitimized it. Because now there was someone that actually took the subject of accents and had a good time with it. Not to make fun of it, but to actually entertain people with it," he continued.
From then on, the actor explained, people became much more accepting of accents like his, which made things "much easier" for him when it came to his acting career.