Other than his massive muscles, another quality of Arnold Schwarzenegger’s best movies is his thick Austrian accent. It’s an accent that you don’t hear in many well-known actors who star in Hollywood movies. While The Terminator actor tried to lose his accent early on in his career, it never left him with an ultimate silver lining.
Actors like Idris Elba, Christian Bale, Toni Collette and Florence Pugh who love doing accents for movies accomplish them so well that you forget they’re not Americans. But not every actor can change their accent for their projects. Arnold Schwarzenegger spoke on The Graham Norton Show about the work he put into trying to remove his thick Austrian accent and the challenges he had.
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. The bottom line is I worked on it. I remember he says, 'You know you always say three [incorrectly]. 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.
Yeah, maybe Schwarzenegger should have asked for his money back because his Austrian accent hasn't strayed away from him. In fact, when the Total Recall actor touched up on the subject on Jimmy Kimmel Live, Kimmel asked him if he could do a New York, Southern, or Australian accent. The action star laughed and humorously said, “I can’t even do an American accent! What the hell are you talking about?!” He also mentioned that it’s possible his accent coach has never worked with anyone of German or Austrian descent to completely remove their accent to play an American. This is pretty understandable, as American and Austrian accents are completely distinct from one another and can be quite a challenge to not have your native dialect slip up.
If an Austrian bodybuilder aspires to be a working actor but fails to shed his accent, there may have been fears this could be a career ruiner before it even starts. Fortunately for Arnold Schwarzenegger, there was a silver lining he told Norton about using his natural dialect in American movies.
So things like that, I was saying things over and over again — it was very helpful but it didn’t’t get rid of my accent. But the funny thing was all the stuff that was said, the Hollywood producers and the directors and all the geniuses saying this was an obstacle for me to become a leading man became an asset. Because when I did Conan the Barbarian, John Milius, the director, said to the press, 'If we wouldn’t have had Schwarzenegger we would have had to build one,' because I was the only one that had the muscles to play that character the way Frank Frazetta painted it, and the way Robert E. Howard has written about it. … And then when I did Terminator, Jim Cameron said, 'What made Terminator work and why it became successful is because Schwarzenegger talks like a machine.'
I always found it remarkable that Arnold Schwarzenegger’s accent in movies never had to be explained. For example, the first movie I ever saw Schwarzenegger in was the Christmas comedy Jingle All the Way. Despite still sporting his Austrian accent, his character Howard never had to explain it and wasn’t written in as an Austrian. Howard was just a father trying to get a Turboman doll for his son. The same was said for all of the other movies Schwarzenegger did where his lineage was not a factor in the characters he played despite not being able to hide his accent. After a while, fans just knew what to hear from the actor during his big screen appearances.
Like James Cameron told the working actor, Schwarzenegger's accent was perfect for playing a human-like killing machine in every piece of dialogue coming out strong and memorable. I’d like to believe it’s because of his accent that people were able to shout Schwarzenegger's famous quotes. The actor himslef even throws back his own movie quotes for his own amusement. And we all know you can’t say quotes like “I’ll be back” or “Hasta la vista, baby” without that signature accent.
According to EW, what helped “legitimize” Schwarzenegger’s accent was appearing in one of the best single-season casts of SNL for season 14. He was part of the hilarious sketch Hanz and Franz where Dana Carvey and Kevin Nealon played the former Governor’s cousins who were muscle-bound bodybuilders trying to take the form of the Conan the Barbarian star. Schwarzenegger remarked how grateful he was for that sketch in showing you can have fun with an accent and entertain people with it. He remarked the sketch made the accent acceptable to a general audience and made it much easier for his career to use it.
Arnold Schwarzenegger may not be capable of doing an American accent, but he doesn’t need that skill. After all, him being the quotable actor he is now is actually because of the Austrian accent he was born with. You can watch his new action series FUBAR and docuseries Arnold on your Netflix subscription.
