My Crazy Life As Arnold Schwarzenegger's Stunt Double

7

I Only Became A Stuntman Because I Lied To James Cameron

I wasn't supposed to be a stuntman. When James Cameron brought me on for The Terminator, he only hired me as Arnold's stand-in for lighting. Then he looked at me and asked, "Have you done stunts before?" Needing the money, I said, "Yeah." It's not the recommended entryway into a stunt career -- you're supposed to train first, then come on as part of a union -- but The Terminator was a crazy guerrilla production that repeatedly broke the law, so it seemed appropriate.

Next thing you know, I'm driving cars and firing shotguns. Which was very basic stuff compared to the gags [stunts] I'd be doing later. Yet even from the start, there was some craziness. Like the ball bearings incident.

6

The Safety Gear Is Not As "Professional" As You Might Hope

Stunt coordinators never handed me any kind of protective gear. You outfit yourself; that's part of the job. I'd head to the sporting goods shop and load up a duffel bag with football pads, hockey pads. Which sounds kind of silly, but the really silly part is that a lot of the time, I wouldn't even be allowed to wear them. I'd put on a big pair of bulky football shoulder pads to see how it would look with a jacket over it, and it'd be like "Uh, no." So I'd take it off.

Today, there's specialized stuff with such a low profile you barely see it. It looks like thin foam from a wetsuit, yet when you hit it with something like a hammer, it suddenly hardens into a shell. Figure skaters wear it now, even.

In Last Action Hero, a helicopter shreds the elevator outside a hotel. When the elevator tilts 45 degrees, I get flung forward, and there's a sort of crossbeam there. I told the stunt coordinator, "I'm going to put some pads on," but he said, "Nope. Too visible." So I went back to my bag -- I happened to have a fiberglass chest plate from another film, and I put that on. The coordinator -- one of the old stunt guys, all broken up -- was like, "Nah, you don't need that, kid. What you gonna wear that for?" I wore it anyway. I got flung forward and hit the upright, and when we finished the gag, my T-shirt was torn in half down the middle, and the solid fiberglass plate was cracked right in half. But for the plate, that would have been my sternum.

Peter Kent

Columbia Pictures

5

I Wore A Rubber Arnold Face For Months In T2

Without prosthetics, I'd say the resemblance between me and Arnold is pretty close.

TriStar Pictures

But it wasn't close enough for the studio. So when I did Terminator 2, I wore latex prosthetics to look more like him. Applying it took three, four hours every day, which added some money to my pocket, sure, but it was extremely uncomfortable. It played hell with my face. If the skin was cut up, they'd simply glue right over it. I wore this thing for 66 consecutive days. When we did the fight scene in the steel mill, I had to get a pair of surgical scissors and snip a hole in the latex near my eye because a cup of sweat ballooned out between the rubber and my face, and it was burning my eyes so I couldn't see.

4

To Safely Light Yourself On Fire, You Must First Freeze Your Nuts Off

When they set me on fire, or even put me near fire, they first covered me with a protectant gel, which had to be kept cold in an ice bucket. Once it warmed up, it tended to slough off, and obviously that's not ideal when it's the only thing keeping your skin "not aflame." But it was pretty brutal when you had to strip naked and pull on a pair of long underwear covered in frozen goop. Today's gels and suits are far superior, but you still have to hold your breath. Breathe, and you'll suck the fire into your lungs.

Peter Kent

3

Adrenaline Is A Hell Of A Drug

During stage combat, you're supposed to pull punches and not make contact. But I've been hit a few times. All stunt performers have. Baywatch was one of the first times I really got hammered. The other guy, a young Australian man, he said to me, "Aye yeah, no problem, mate. I've done a lot of fights. I'm good to go." We ran the scene, and of course he punched me square in the mouth.

When you hear "Action," the adrenaline runs. Say you're doing a car gag, and everyone rehearses at 30 mph. That's your set speed. Then they call action, and the next thing you know the guy's coming in at 50 -- adrenaline! -- and everything goes to shit. If it doesn't totally go to shit, it's called "hero-ing out." Sometimes when you're taking the really hard hits, you hero out and don't feel anything. Not until later.

In Last Action Hero, Arnold is running across the roofs of these taxis in the rain, then one cranks onto the curb and spits him off, and he rolls onto the pavement. That was me. And those taxis were really slippery in cowboy boots, even after I covered the roofs with sandpaper to get some traction. When I rolled off and hit the windshield, it would break, and the energy dispersed through it.

On the third take, the windshield didn't break. So I hit it really hard with my lower back, at the wrong angle and landed in traffic. Girls in the crew were screaming, everyone screaming -- "Cut, cut, stop the cars!" Plus it was movie rain, which is 30 times heavier than anything nature can deliver, so the stunt drivers on the road couldn't see where I was. I just made myself as skinny as possible and prayed like hell.

2

I Made Arnold Fart On Penelope Ann Miller

I can do Arnold's voice. I never had to as part of the job -- it was purely for fun, a product of hanging around the guy for 15 years, working out in the same gym with him every day. At this hotel in Chicago where we stayed while filming Red Heat, I called down to the front desk, all "Yah, this is Ahnold here. I'm in Peter Kent's room. Can I get the steak and the lahbster and eeh couple glasses of wine, and send them up here ... ooh, and the cheesecake."

When we checked out, he was like, "Gawdammit, why do I have all these charges over here. All this food, I never ordered this food."

The front desk lady said, "Well, yes you did, sir. You said send it up to Mr. Kent's room."

And then Arnold looked at me and said, "I'll KILL you, you bastard!"

But I paid him back. I often made the guy spaghetti when I visited his house, where we'd look at scripts together. We'd hang out on the grass. Then choppers would arrive, paparazzi leaning out. And Arnold would be like, "Get down. We have to go inside. They want to nab photos of me in my bathing suit!"

1

The Accident That Ended My Career

We used to have a saying: "If you're not holding your guts in your hand at the end of the day, you've got nothing to complain about."

That may sound a bit extreme, but you know, it's something you buy into when you first start. You know you're going to get a broken bone or two, some scrapes and cuts, plenty of bruises, that all goes with the territory. We've seen a few high-profile stunt people die this summer, but that's not a new trend. It's the nature of the beast. Performing is definitely safer than it's ever been, but Murphy's Law still kicks in.

By 1995, I'd broken some things, sure. Then came Eraser. It was the scene where Arnold and James Caan are fighting, and Vanessa Williams is sort of the damsel in distress. They're up atop a shipping container, and Arnold is struggling up the side. He gets shot in the shoulder, then takes a running leap and climbs onto the bottom end of the container -- that was all me. That's pretty hard, latching onto a flat traveling object from a trampoline jump, grabbing it with one hand, then hanging there. I broke a finger doing that.