Arnold Schwarzenegger Reveals Doctors “Made a Mistake” That Caused Him to Undergo Third Open-Heart Surgery: “I Was Really Freaking out”

Just prior to filming the sixth installation in the Terminator franchise, Dark Fate, actor Arnold Schwarzenegger was in the hospital for what was originally intended to be a “non-invasive surgery.” However, his condition took a swift turn for the worse as doctors revealed to him that the procedure would be “unlike what [they] planned.”

“I was really freaking out,” Schwarzenegger told viewers in a recent YouTube video, explaining that he “woke up and all of a sudden the doctors were in front of [him],” apologizing.

They told him that they “‘made a mistake and poked through the heart wall,’ and had to open [him] up very quickly,” resulting in his third open-heart surgery.

However, the action star was not going to let the mistake end his life — or prevent him from filming the last movie in the series that put his name on the map.

“The bottom line is, you cannot roll the clock back,” the former governor of California shared, noting that he “was in the middle of a disaster” after hearing the doctors’ news.

“So now how do I get out of it?” he continued. “You have to shift gears. Collect yourself, shift gears and say, ‘Okay what I need to do now is get out of this hospital.'”

In order to “get out of the hospital as quickly as possible” and recover in time to film Dark Fate, which was released in November 2019, he “wanted to get really going with exercise.”

“I had to be in shape, I had to be able to move around, run around, lift things up, do the fight scenes,” he said.

Although he claims he “looked like an idiot waddling around in the hallways,” he intended to start his training right away to avoid any further health complications.

“The doctors said you have to exercise your lungs because if you get pneumonia you can die,” he shared.

In addition to exercise, he credited a “positive attitude” and a “fantastic” support system for his recovery, clarifying that “none of this we can do by ourselves.” By the time the sixth film was in production, he “was all back together again.”

Terminator: Dark Fate is available to buy or rent on Prime Video. Watch Schwarzenegger’s video above.