Arnold Schwarzenegger was smoking a cigar on his patio in the Los Angeles neighborhood of Brentwood, lamenting all the things that he had decided to trim from his list of 10 essentials. Most of all his five kids.
“I cannot live without my children,” he said on a video call as his pet pig, Schnelly, wandered around. “I need to be in touch daily.”
Schwarzenegger was sounding a lot like Luke Brunner, his character in the Netflix series “FUBAR,” which just began streaming its second season. In it, he plays the world’s best spy, and perhaps its most overprotective father, who learns that his daughter is a C.I.A. operative with an ego, just like Dad is.
“She says, ‘When they say Brunner, I don’t want them just to talk about you. I want them also to talk about me,’” he said. “It’s the same thing as it is in real life with Patrick, my son, being an actor now and being big time and doing fantastic shows,” including a star turn this year in Season 3 of “The White Lotus.”
Was the elder Schwarzenegger feeling a bit competitive? “I hope and wish that he will do bigger things than I’ve ever done,” he said before elaborating on his love of chess and driving his M47 tank. “It’s fantastic when kids are performing better than their parents because that is largely because of them, and it’s also because of you. It’s upbringing.”
These are edited excerpts from the conversation.
Chess
I learned to play chess with my father and did that pretty much every day. I have collected chess sets from all over the world, but now 99 percent of the time you play on an app with your friends in Austria or Germany or Hungary or Russia — wherever they are.
Feeding My Animals
When I’m home, I get up at around 5:30 and open the cage to the pig inside the kitchen, and he waddles out. If I don’t open the outside door before 6, my big malamute starts howling. Then I open up the stalls and let my miniature pony and miniature donkey out. They come into the kitchen and I feed them my oatmeal cookies before they go outside in the grass. When they start pushing and head-banging me, that’s a sign, like, “We want to go in the stall now.”
A Good Cigar
Most people don’t know what to get you for a gift, so they get you the thing that’s obvious. Someone gave me 50 Montecristo No. 2 as a Christmas gift.
Cycling
No matter where I go in the world, I always try to go on bike rides. You can see the city in a different way than you see with a car.
A Public Gym
Working out at home or in a fancy studio doesn’t do it. You need energy around you. When I come back from my workouts at Gold’s Gym, I feel like I’ve all of a sudden gone from a black-and-white to a color movie.
Paints and Canvas
I learned back in school in Austria to paint, and when my kids were born, I said to myself, “Instead of going to buy a Christmas card, why not paint one?” Painting for every holiday and milestone shows you put effort in and completely relaxes you while keeping your mind sharp.
Arnold’s Pump Club
It’s something that I started doing two years ago to help people with their training. All my life I’ve been doing seminars and writing books and pumping people up. Then they realized that the training is not just for your strength or muscle development, but it actually will help you feel more confident about yourself.
My M47 Tank
I became a tank driver in the military at 18, and I learned how to drive the M47 — an American tank that was given to Austria after World War II. When I found out that they were burying them because they had a new version of tanks in Austria, through the permission of the Americans, I was able to bring it over.
Skiing
When I grew up, I didn’t ski. We didn’t have the money. Then when I started lifting weights, I said no skiing. And when I got into the movies, they said no skiing. Finally I said, “Screw it, I’m going to go skiing anyway.” I’ve been avoiding knee replacements for the last 10 years. But skiing is a smooth activity that, if you do it right, there’s no impact on your joints.
’50s Rock ’n’ Roll
When I was 15, I bought myself a transistor radio. For the first time, I could listen to the programs that I wanted to listen to. “Hit Parade” was on Wednesday nights at 7, and that’s where I heard Elvis, Chuck Berry, Little Richard, Fats Domino. When I came over to America, I always was tuning in to ’50s and country stations. Now that’s the only thing that I listen to.
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