Arnold Schwarzenegger has made the sad — and somewhat bizarre — confession that he’s not sold on the idea of an afterlife.
The former bodybuilder, actor and politician went deep on the topic with his pal Danny DeVito during a conversation for Interview magazine. The “Terminator” star insisted that heaven was “some fantasy”.
“It reminds me of Howard Stern’s question to me,” Schwarzenegger recalled.
“‘Tell me, governor, what happens to us when we die?’ I said, ‘Nothing. You’re six feet under. Anyone that tells you something else is a f***king liar.’
“I said: ‘We don’t know what happens with the soul and all this spiritual stuff that I’m not an expert in, but I know that the body as we see each other now, we will never see each other again like that.’”
DeVito chimed in with, “We deteriorate.”
“Except in some fantasy,” Schwarzenegger responded.
“When people talk about, ‘I will see them again in heaven,’ it sounds so good, but the reality is that we won’t see each other again after we’re gone. That’s the sad part. I know people feel comfortable with death, but I don’t.
“Because I will f***ing miss the s**t out of everything. To sit with you here, that will one day be gone? And to have fun and to go to the gym and to pump up, to ride my bike on the beach, to travel around, to see interesting things all over the world. What the f**k?”
“Life! It’s the best!” DeVito responded.
Schwarzenegger grew up in the Catholic Church and spoke about his faith as recently as 2021.
“I grew up Catholic, I went to church, went to Catholic school, I learned the Bible and my catechisms,” Schwarzenegger said in a YouTube video.
“And from those days I remember a phrase that is relevant today: A servant’s heart. It means serving something larger than yourself.”
He added: “What we need right now from our elected representatives is a public servant’s heart. We need public servants that serve something larger than their own power or their own party. We need public servants who will serve higher ideals, the ideals in which this country was founded, the ideals that other countries look up to.”
Schwarzenegger served as governor of California for eight years from 2003 after standing as a Republican candidate.
In 2011 he reached his term limit as governor and returned to acting. He starred in “The Expendables 2” in 2012 and in 2013 took the lead role in “The Last Stand” — his first leading role in a decade.
In 2015, Schwarzenegger joined The New Celebrity Apprentice, replacing Donald Trump who was then in the throes of his first presidential campaign.
The “Predator” star’s political career was a fairly dramatic shift away from the way Schwarzenegger climbed to fame, having won the Mr. Universe title in 1969 aged 20 and subsequently winning Mr. Olympia seven times.