Arnold Schwarzenegger Paid ‘Accent Removal Coach’ Early in Career: ‘Should Have Gotten My Money Back’

It wasn't until Arnold Schwarzenegger learned the power of his own voice that he found success in Hollywood.

Although the former governor of California explained last week on The Graham Norton Show that his distinct Austrian accent eventually "became an asset" for his career, he originally paid someone to help him get rid of it.

"I did not really have that talent, even though 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 should have otherwise gotten my money back," he explained. "The bottom line is, I worked on it."

After taking Norton and some of his fellow guests through the vocal exercises he was assigned, Schwarzenegger said they were "very helpful, but it didn't get rid of my accent."

Schwarzenegger wrote about his sessions with Robert Easton (a.k.a. The Speech Doctor) in his new memoir Be Useful: Seven Tools for Life.

"But the funny thing is, all the stuff they said — the Hollywood producers and the directors — they were saying is an obstacle for me to become a leading man, became an asset," he noted.

Schwarzenegger recalled The Terminator director James Cameron raving about his performance, saying, "'What made Terminator work and why it became successful is because Schwarzenegger talks like a machine.'"

Earlier this month, the Golden Globe winner recalled a behind-the-scenes disagreement he had with Cameron over his titular character's now infamous line "I'll be back."

"I didn't feel comfortable with this 'I'll — I'll be back, I'll,' this 'L-L' type of thing," he said. "So I said to him, I said, 'Why don't I just, since I already talk like a machine, I might as well say, 'I will be back.' And he says, 'No, no doesn't sound as good.'"

Schwarzenegger continued, "I said, 'Well, it sounds better to me. Let's just forget about the 'I'll be back' and let's just do 'I will be back.' And he says, 'Arnold, are you the goddamn writer here, or what is going on here?'"