Arnold Schwarzenegger - Total Recall - My Unbelievably True Life Story

The world didn’t find out Maria and I had separated until May, when the Los Angeles Times called asking questions. We responded with a statement that we had “amicably separated” and that we were working on the future of our relationship. Predictably, the news set off a media frenzy, amplified by the fact that we hadn’t explained why.

The therapist thought we should include the truth, “so that it’s clear who is the victim and who is the wrongdoer.” I was opposed, on the grounds that I wasn’t a public official anymore and wasn’t obliged to share my private life with anybody. Yet I also had to admit to myself, “I’ve let the public know everything else about me, so why hide the negative side?” But if I was going to talk about bad behavior, I wanted to do it on my own timetable.

It was silly to think I would have any choice. People talked, people wrote e-mails, and within a few days, the Movie Channel started asking questions about a son born out of wedlock. Then the LA Times picked up on the story.

The day before it published the news, a reporter called to let us know and to ask for a comment. I gave a response that said, in essence, “I understand and deserve the feelings of anger and disappointment among my friends and family. There are no excuses and I take full responsibility for the hurt I have caused. I have apologized to Maria, my children and my family. I am truly sorry. I ask that the media respect my wife and children through this extremely difficult time. While I deserve your questions and criticism, my family does not.” I wanted to protect my family’s privacy, which remains a priority of mine today.

And then, knowing that the story would break the next morning, I had to tell my kids. I told Katherine and Christina over the phone, because they were in Chicago with Maria for Oprah Winfrey’s farewell show. Patrick and Christopher were home with me, so I asked them to sit down and told them face to face. In each conversation I explained that I’d made a mistake. I said, “I am sorry about it. This happened with Mildred fourteen years ago and she got pregnant and now there’s a child by the name of Joseph. It doesn’t change my love for you and I hope it doesn’t change your love for me. But that is what happened. I’m terribly sorry about it. Your mother is very upset and disappointed. I’ll work very hard to bring everyone together again. This is going to be a challenging time, and I hope it won’t be too awful with the response of other kids at school, or the parents when you go to your friends’ houses, or when you turn on TV or pick up the paper.”

I should have added “or go on the internet,” because one of the first things that Katherine and Patrick each did was tweet how they felt. Patrick quoted from the rock song “Where’d You Go”: “some days you feel like shit, some days you want to quit and just be normal for a bit,” and added, “yet I love my family till death do us part.” Katherine wrote, “This is definitely not easy but I appreciate your love and support as I begin to heal and move forward in life. I will always love my family!”

It took weeks for them to begin to trust the fact that our family hadn’t totally blown up. Our kids saw Maria and me communicating almost daily. They saw us go out for lunch or dinner. Patrick and Christopher developed a certain rhythm going back and forth between the house and the condo. All of this helped restore a little bit of stability.

I regretted also the impact on Mildred and Joseph. They weren’t used to living in the public eye, and all of a sudden they found themselves besieged by publicity-hungry lawyers and by reporters from gossip shows and tabloids. I stayed in touch with Mildred and helped arrange a more private place for them to stay. Mildred was never adversarial and handled the situation honestly, and when she left our household she told the media we’d been fair with her.

Although Maria and I remain separated as of this writing, I still try to treat everyone as if we are together. Maria has a right to be bitterly disappointed and never look at me the same way again. The public nature of our separation makes it doubly hard for us to work through it. The divorce is going forward, but I still have the hope that Maria and I can come back together as husband and wife and as a family with our children. You can call this denial, but it’s the way my mind works. I’m still in love with Maria. And I am an optimist. All my life I have focused on the positives. I am optimistic that we will come together again.

During this past year, Maria has sometimes asked, “How can you go forward with your life when I feel like everything has fallen apart? How come you don’t feel lost?” Of course she already knows the answer because she understands me better than anybody else. I have to keep moving forward. And she has kept moving forward too, becoming more and more involved in causes associated with her parents. She has traveled all over the country promoting the fight against Alzheimer’s, and is very active on the Special Olympics board, helping prepare for the 2015 International Special Olympics Games in Los Angeles.

I was glad to have a busy schedule after we separated because otherwise I would have felt lost. I kept working and stayed on the move. By the summer, I’d appeared at a series of post-governorship speaking engagements across the northern United States and Canada. I went to the Xingu River in Brazil with Jim Cameron; to London for Mikhail Gorbachev’s eightieth birthday party; to Washington, DC, for a summit on immigration; and to Cannes to receive the Legion d’Honneur medal and promote new projects. Yet while I was as busy as ever, none of it felt the way it should. What had made my career fun for more than thirty years was sharing it with Maria. We’d done everything together and now my life felt out of kilter. There was no one to come home to.

When the scandal broke in the spring of 2011, I was scheduled to give the keynote speech at an international energy forum in Vienna organized in conjunction with the United Nations Development Program. I worried that the media frenzy would hamper my effectiveness as an environmental champion, and half expected the invitation to be withdrawn. But the organizers in Vienna wanted to proceed. “This is a personal matter,” they said. “We don’t think it will affect the great example you set in environmental policy. The million solar roofs are not going to be dismantled …” In that speech, I promised that I would make it my mission to convince the world that a green global economy is desirable, necessary, and within reach.

When I left Sacramento, I knew I would want to pick up my entertainment career. I had taken no salary during my seven years as governor and it was time to get back to paid work. But the media onslaught of April and May made it temporarily impossible. To my embarrassment and regret, painful consequences of the scandal rippled out beyond my family to many of the people I worked with.

I announced that I was suspending my career to work on personal matters. We postponed The Governator, an animated-cartoon and comic-book series I’d been collaborating on with Stan Lee, the legendary creator of Spiderman. Another project that got derailed was Cry Macho, a movie I’d looked forward to making the entire time I was governor. Al Ruddy, the producer of The Godfather and Million Dollar Baby , had been holding this movie for me for years. But after the scandal broke, the material was just too close to home—the plot revolves around a horse-trainer’s friendship with a streetwise twelve-year-old Latino kid. I called Al and said, “Maybe somebody else can star, I don’t mind, or you can hold it for me a little longer.”

He’d already talked to the investors. “They’ll make any other movie with you. But not this one,” he said.