Arnold Schwarzenegger got injured while filming Total Recall. That’s about as expected because the veteran actor has a long history of getting hurt on projects.
Injuries come with the territory in action films, and Schwarzenegger has put his body through a lot in his career. The former bodybuilder has now shared a specific injury — a bad one — he suffered filming Total Recall.
Schwarzenegger vs. movie set
Speaking to Yahoo! Entertainment, Arnold Schwarzenegger talked about what happened during one particular foot chase in Total Recall. His character was running from hitmen and breaks a window on a departing train in order to get inside.
As the 72-year-old actor tells it, the window did not explode before he hit it, which is what had been the intention.
“They did not explode the window before I hit the window with the gun, so therefore I cut my wrist deep,” Schwarzenegger said. “And I had to get stitched up during lunch break, which was at like midnight, because we were night shooting.”
In order to deal with the injury during filming, he said that “After I was stitched up and everything, we hid the bandages, we pulled the jacket all the way to the front and taped it up, so we don’t see the bandages.”
It turns out that Schwarzenegger wasn’t the only one who got hurt on Total Recall. Co-star Michael Ironside, who plays the bad guy Richter in the film, suffered a cracked rib while filming the elevator fight near the end.
He also shared that while they were filming in Mexico City, nearly the entire cast and crew suffered through food poisoning at one point. After shooting Predator in Mexico three years earlier, Schwarzenegger was prepared, as he had his food and beverages flown down from the United States.
Total Recall at 30
Arnold Schwarzenegger was giving this interview in part to celebrate the 30th anniversary of when Total Recall debuted in 1990. The sci-fi action film was directed by Paul Verhoeven and is still popular to this day.
The film was a huge box office success, bringing in more than $261 million around the world. It debuted at No. 1 in the United States during the summer of 1990 and kept making money through the end of August.
Cast members, in addition to Schwarzenegger and Ironside, included Rachel Ticotin as Melina, Sharon Stone as Lori, and Ronny Cox as Vilos Cohaagen.