Arnold Schwarzenegger Says ‘Conan’ Director ‘Had Me Doing Terrible S—‘ on Set Like Biting a ‘Real, Dead Vulture’: ‘PETA Would Have a Field Day With That One’
Arnold Schwarzenegger’s new self-help book and memoir “Be Useful: Seven Tools for Life” recalls the crazy things he had to do to pull off his most iconic film roles. Most wildly, he reveals that he bit into a real, dead vulture while filming takes for 1982’s “Conan the Barbarian.” Schwarzenegger writes that the film’s director, John Milius, forced him to do “terrible shit” during the making of the film.
“I learned to ride horses and camels and elephants. I learned how to jump from large rocks, how to climb and swing from long ropes, how to fall from a height,” Schwarzenegger writes (via Insider). “I basically went to another vocational school, this one for aspiring action heroes.”
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“Then on top of that, Milius had me doing all kinds of terrible shit. I crawled through rocks, take after take, until my forearms bled. I ran from wild dogs that managed to catch me and pull me into a thorn bush,” Schwarzenegger continues. “I bit a real, dead vulture that required I wash my mouth out with alcohol after each take. (PETA would have a field day with that one.). On one of the first days of filming, I tore a gash on my back that required forty stitches.”
Whatever hardships Schwarzenegger endured on the “Conan the Barbarian” set weren’t enough to dissuade him from starring in the 1984 sequel, “Conan the Destroyer,” although that film was directed by Richard Fleischer and not John Milius. Variety has reached out to Milius’ representative for comment.
“Conan the Barbarian” was hardly the only movie Schwarzenegger did crazy things on while filming. He writes that to pull off the eponymous cyborg role in James Cameron’s “The Terminator” he was forced to perform every stunt featuring a gun with a blindfold on.
“On ‘The Terminator,’ it was becoming a machine: blindfolding myself until I could do every gun stunt with my eyes closed, and shooting so many rounds at the range that I no longer blinked when my gun fired,” Schwarzenegger writes. “On ‘Terminator 2,’ it was practicing the shotgun cocking flip so many times my knuckles bled for what amounted to two seconds of screen time. I didn’t complain.”
Schwarzenegger’s book, “Be Useful: Seven Tools for Life,” is now available for purchase.
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