Los Angeles: Arnold Schwarzenegger, who made a breakthrough in Hollywood with 'Terminator' says he had hired an accent removal coach in the early days of his career. The actor said he had a heavy Austrian accent and believed it would be easy for him to make it big in Hollywood, if he could get rid of his accent.
However, it was his accent that actually landed him the role in 'Terminator'. James Cameron who helmed the first film of the franchise 'The Terminator' thought Schwarzenegger sounded like a machine, perfect for his role in the movie. During an appearance on The Graham Norton Show, Schwarzenegger spoke about the beginnings of his American acting career. He added that he had multiple coaches to prepare for his Hollywood debut.
"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 told Norton. The former California governor said he would spend hours with the coach to sound like an American, working on pronunciation of words like "three" or "wine", which sound different in German, the official language of Austria.
"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, he said. We would say, This is a nice vine.' But it's actually wine,' right? 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.
He may not have succeeded in souding American but Schwarzenegger managed to break out as an action star with 1982's Conan the Barbarian and 1984's The Terminator", where his accent became an asset in playing the cyborg killer antagonist. When I did Terminator,' Jim Cameron said, What made Terminator' work and why it became successful is because Schwarzenegger talks like a machine,' Schwarzenegger recalled. The actor most recently featured in the Netflix series Fubar and documentary series 'Arnold'.