Arnold Schwarzenegger - Total Recall - My Unbelievably True Life Story

The next step was photos: making sure that images of me running on the beach, skiing, and weight lifting made it into newspapers so people would know I was back. Even so, the studios still were slow returning calls. I was amazed to discover that insurance was an issue. Not only were they telling my agent “We don’t know how people feel about him now,” but also, “We just don’t know if we can insure him.” There seemed to be endless questions and uncertainties that they didn’t want to deal with.

A whole year passed without a new movie. Finally, I had a visit from Army Bernstein, a producer whose daughter had gone to the same preschool as our kids. He’d heard the talk from the studios and knew I was looking for work. “I’ll do a movie with you anytime,” he said. “And I’ve got a fantastic movie being written.” Independent producers like Army are the saviors in Hollywood because they’ll take risks that the big studios won’t. He had his own company with a string of successes and was well financed.

The film he had in mind for me was End of Days , an action-horror-thriller that was being timed to reach theaters in late 1999 and cash in on all the buzz around the world about Y2K, the turn of the millennium. I play Jericho Cane, an ex-cop who has to stop Satan from coming to New York and taking a bride in the closing hours of 1999. If Jericho fails, then the woman will give birth to the Antichrist, and the entire next thousand years will be a millennium of evil.

The director, Peter Hyams, came recommended by Jim Cameron, and like Cameron, he preferred to shoot at night. So when we went into production near the end of 1998, we were on a nighttime schedule in a studio in Los Angeles. To my amazement, there were insurance people and studio executives sitting on the set—the executives were from Universal, which had signed on to distribute the film. They were watching to see whether I’d faint or die or have to take a lot of breaks.

As it happened, the first scene we shot called for Jericho to get attacked by ten Satanists who beat him to a bloody pulp. The fight is at night, in a dark alley during a pouring rain. So we went to work, and we would fight until I ended up flat on my back staring up into sheets of man-made, backlit rain falling down on me as I lose consciousness. After the take, I’d come off the set and sit by the monitor, dripping with a towel around my shoulders, ready to go out and do the next one.

Around three in the morning, one of the insurance guys said, “Gee, isn’t it exhausting to do this over and over and get soaking wet and beaten to a pulp?”

“Actually not,” I said. “I love shooting at night because I have a lot of energy at night. I get a lot of inspiration. It’s really terrific.”

Then I would go out for another beating, and come back again and sit down and say, “Can I see a playback?” And I would study the playback as the technicians ran it on the monitor.

“I don’t know how you do it,” the insurance guy said.

“This is nothing. You should see on some of the other movies, like the Terminator movies, where we went really wild.”

“But don’t you get tired?”

“No, no. I don’t get tired. Especially not after the heart surgery. It gave me energy beyond belief. I feel like a totally new person.” Then the guy from the studio would ask the same question.

After that first week, the insurance guys and studio guys never came back. Meanwhile, word went out from the stunt guys and makeup and wardrobe people that I was feeling great, doing well, and so forth. From then on, offers started to come in again, and I no longer had to convince people that I still had a pulse.