Arnold Schwarzenegger has dropped a few anecdotes from his long career as an action movie star in his new book, Be Useful: Seven Tools for Life. The stories won’t prompt anyone to run out for acting lessons.
Among them: the time he bit a dead vulture.
The incident happened during his Conan the Barbarian filming.
Schwarzenegger recalls having to bite a dead vulture several times for the scene in which Conan is tied to a tree.
“I bit a real, dead vulture that required I wash my mouth out with alcohol after each take,” he writes.
That wasn’t the only hardship.
“On one of the first days of filming, I tore a gash on my back that required forty stitches.
Schwarzenegger was pushed to do his own stunts because of the lack of suitable doubles.
“Conan was brutal because there weren’t stunt guys big enough yet, so I had to crawl until my knees and elbows bled, get attacked by those dogs, and bit that real dead vulture. Luckily, lifting weights became popular, and muscular stunt guys became available.”
One other incident from his career stands out. The former Governor of California said a swimming scene in the movie The 6th Day almost caused him to drown.
“On Sixth Day, I probably had my most dangerous stunt. It was supposed to be simple, a scene where I am swimming. But there was a cover on the pool. I was supposed to come out the same place I went in, but I got turned around and started to run out of air. I couldn’t find my way back to the exit, and I tried to stay as calm as possible but knew I didn’t have long. Luckily, my stunt double Billy Lucas realized what was happening and came in to save me.”
