The World According to Arnold

Hollywood superstar Arnold Schwarzenegger knows what he wants—and usually gets it.

David Shaw
From the Print Edition:
Arnold Schwarzenegger, Summer 96

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As the waitresses begin service, I ask Schwarzenegger how often he manages to come to the first-Monday-of-the-month cigar nights here.

 

"I try to go to every one," he says, his gutteral Austrian

accent determinedly intact, even after three years of what he calls "accent-removal lessons."

 

"I think I only missed two last year. Because it's on a Monday, even if we're filming somewhere else, I can usually come home for the weekend and stay Monday before I go back."

As the evening wears on, Schwarzenegger is friendly, intelligent, charming, funny and attentive, all without seeming to be either obsequious or disingenuous. He chats unself-consciously with his friends, makes one leisurely walking tour of the room to shmooze with various guests and periodically turns to me with a question or a comment--or an answer to one of my questions, one of the first of which is, "Are there always this many women here? It looks like 25 to 30 percent of the total crowd is female."

 

"It's increasing all the time," he says. "Usually, when they come the first time, it's just out of curiosity or to be with their men. They don't even take a cigar. Or they take it and don't light it. But two or three months later, you see them smoking--and always with the biggest cigars."

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