My Crazy Life As Arnold Schwarzenegger's Stunt Double

Terminator's big shoot-out is in a police station with glass dividers between cubicles. I was opening fire with a machine gun full of blanks, while the effects guy was going to break the glass by shooting steel ball bearings. His device was powered with compressed air, like from a diving tank, and it looked like a full-on rifle. It had a large bore in it and fired bearings the size of your thumb. You get hit with that, it could kill you.

Just as Jim called action, I saw the stunt guys playing the detectives poised to run. And I called "Cut!" Which is something you should never do. That's the director's prerogative, and he doesn't like it when other people say the cool stuff. Jim said, "Peter, what the fuck are you doing?!" And I said, "Jim, Jim. This guy right here, he's diving through the frame right there, isn't he?" Stunt guy nodded. And I said to the effects guy, "And you're shooting there, aren't you?" Effects guy nodded. And I said, "Jim, if he dives into the shot, he's gonna get shot in the head with that steel ball bearing." Stunt guy and effects guy looked at each other. There was sort of a long beat there, and Jim goes, "Oh. Good call."

So that's how it began for me. Later, we did Commando, and there's a scene where Arnold swings across the galleria on a banner. I was quite gung-ho to do it. But it turns out that actual stunts require actual training, so veteran Bob Yerkes did Arnold in that scene -- even though he's only like five-foot-nine. Bob took me under his wing and invited me to his stunt school, where I learned what stunts are really like.

If you watch, say, the tanker chase, you'll see me with the Arnold mask, climbing from the pickup to the tanker. But only in the original cut. In the remaster, released to theaters this year, Jim went over and put Arnold's face in digitally.

That jump from one truck to the other is a big step, and that throws your balance off -- also, you're going 60 mph with no wires holding you. So I took a wooden crate and screwed it into the floor of the pickup to guide me. I took a bunch of finishing nails and hammered them up from the underside so the points went up. I was wearing big motorcycle boots with a thick sole, so my first step onto the nails gave me a good solid grip.

Right before shooting this, Jim said, "We're going to go to lunch and then do this." It was 4 in the morning, I obviously wasn't hungry, so I said I'd really like to do it right now. So Jim just grabbed his bullhorn and said, "OK, we're calling grace for lunch," which means they push lunch back and the crew of 300 gets paid extra. So me not wanting to wait cost the studio an extra $20,000.

Jim said, "Peter, if you pull this off, I'll give you the brass balls award." Later on, he said he'd never do that stunt today. It was much too dangerous. That's nice to hear after the fact.

In T2, Arnold points an M79 grenade launcher at the doors of Cyberdyne, and that's me right there. When we were first shooting, I looked at the ground, and there was this huge bag of naphthalene (basically mothballs), cork, and all the debris that was supposed to come out. And some gasoline, just enough to make a nice fireball. I was like, "Holy shit, that's a big bomb." And Jim says, "Listen. The Terminator does not flinch. If you flinch, you're gonna have to do it again."

It's one of those gags you tell yourself you're not going to do again. You get paid for doing it again, yes, but that's not the point. You really, really don't want a do-over on walking into a bomb.

I had a wig on my head, covered in fire gel to keep my own hair from burning, and my face was heavily gelled. I had the suit on, and I was shivering right before they called it, because I was wearing the ice-cold Nomex. Jim called action, and boom -- this huge explosion went off in my face. I stepped through the door, and I heard him call cut. I turned around, and the whole crew erupted in laughter.

The blast had blown the hairpiece back on my head, so it was standing straight up like a fright wig. My whole face was completely black -- all you could see was my eyes -- and I had a pretty substantial burn on my forehead, right at the hairline. But I was like, "What the fuck are you laughing at? I got it right. I don't have to do it again."

When I first got up, my back was a little sore. But when I woke up the next morning in the hotel, I was pissing blood.

When we were working on Kindergarten Cop, he was playing opposite Penelope Ann Miller -- a bit of a pain to deal with. It was her first real movie, but she was ordering people around, especially the stunt guys. So, knowing the two had a scene together in a small confined space for a long time, I ... made some spaghetti sauce for Arnold. I juiced up broccoli, and Brussels sprouts, and cauliflower, and anything else that gives you gas, and I poured it into the sauce, and gave it to him for lunch. When they did lines, he began farting uncontrollably.

Penelope complained to the director, saying, "I can't work with this. It's horrific, and it stinks, and he just won't stop." Arnold came up to me, grabbed me by the shoulders, and said, "Peter, Peter, oh no. What have you done to me?!"

Somehow, that wasn't the end of my career. This was ...

Arnold takes a crowbar and smashes the gear holding the shipping container up, and the box falls 100 feet to the dock and shatters. We had cable cutters on all four corners of the box. But when we did the scene, the final cable held. There wasn't sufficient voltage in the system to fire the last cutter. (The cutters had been wired wrong, in series instead of parallel, applying voltage unevenly.) This was a big cable -- as thick as my wrist -- and we used aerospace cutters, which they apparently use on the space shuttle, hopefully with greater success.

Add it all up, and you get three tons of metal spinning on one angry axis. That's when the wire holding me unspooled and let me fly. James Caan's stunt guy slid down the box. Me, I dropped straight past it. Then the whole container spun around and smacked me toward the warehouse wall. And then it happened again. And again. It just kept sucking me back in and swatting me out.

I broke my collarbone, my shoulder blade, my ankle, and three separate ribs. The next day, I got a call from some oblivious PA asking if I was coming in. I said I wasn't. I was done as a stunt performer.

Well, not quite. Eight weeks later, I was all healed up, and popped back in for a couple more scenes. But I was done after that. Ten years was plenty. I mean, it's not like I'm going to be an action star in my 70s. That would be crazy.

Peter Kent went on acting in non-stunt roles for the next 20 years, and now runs his own stunt school. Ryan Menezes is an editor and interviewer here at Cracked. Follow him on Twitter for bits cut from this article and other stuff no one should see.

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