How Arnie took his body from an ‘eight to a ten’ for Terminator: Genysis

Arnold Schwarzenegger attends the LA Premiere of Paramount Pictures' Terminator Genisys. Source: Getty Images

FOR Arnold Schwarzenegger, slipping back into the Terminator after a 12-year break from the iconic character was as easy as “riding a bicycle”.

While he may be approaching his seventies, the 67-year-old actor’s body is as extraordinary as ever, in part because he says he never forgets how to “act like a machine”.

“To get back into that role, is almost kind of like riding a bicycle,” he toldnews.com.au, making it sound like a piece of cake. “It’s like you never forget how to ride a bicycle, and so for me I will never forget how to click in and become the character, the machine.

“There’s really a lot of fun to playing the Terminator again, and I remember all the things that I trained for and how to act like a machine, and how to do the fight scenes and the chase scenes and all of those things, it was fun and a challenge at the same time.”

Arnie in the 1984 film The Terminator. Source: Supplied

Arnie in the 2015 film Terminator: Genysis. Source: AP

Arnie said he needed to take his body from an “eight” to a “ten” for the role, which is no mean feat thirty-plus years after he first debuted the character.

“I maintained always kind of like an eight,” he said of his time away from the movie scene (primarily as the Governor of California), “so to get up to a ten was two months of serious training and heavier training because the director really wanted me to be at the same bodyweight that I was in 1984 as the first Terminator because he felt rightfully so that the skeleton is the same size, it doesn't change, the inside is always the same.”

He adds that if he has a clear vision of what he is training for, then everything else falls into place. 

Arnold Schwarzenegger as the Terminator, in Terminator Genisys. Source: AP

“If I need to be bigger and more muscular and ten pounds more, I visualise exactly what I need to look like and my body will go in that direction and my willpower to exercise everyday will also go in that direction. For me that is easy.”

The father-of-five says he doesn’t really reflect on his age, nor how old he feels.

“I feel the same way that I did twenty or thirty years ago, I feel wiser and smarter and more experienced, but other than that I really don’t feel the difference.

“I’m not a person that looks back, I always think forward so I very rarely look at photos of myself from twenty years ago or ten years ago, I have very little interest in that. I only am interested in what tomorrow brings, that’s where my energy goes.