Arnold Schwarzenegger Reminisces About His Life-Changing Role in 'The Terminator' (Exclusive)

There’s little doubt James Cameron’s 1984 sci-fi action hit The Terminator broke new ground in movie making. Now considered a modern classic, the 30-year-old film also represents a seismic shift in Arnold Schwarzenegger’s career, the actor and former “Governator” shared in an interview that appears in the forthcoming 3D Blu-ray combo pack of Terminator Genisys. (Watch it exclusively above.)

“It was really the first action movie where I didn’t have to take off my clothes,” the 68-year-old actor pointed out. Up until his groundbreaking gig as a cyborg assassin from the future, Schwarzenegger was best known for playing Conan the Barbarian in the fantasy action series of the same name. And he wore little more than a loincloth in the films. He also appeared sans shirt as a competitive bodybuilder in the 1976 dramedy Stay Hungry, and made his big-screen debut playing a similar role, as Mr. Universe, in the 1969 fantasy adventure Hercules in New York. (Images appear below, clockwise, in the order they were mentioned.)

Of course Schwarzenegger famously did disrobe for his early scenes in The Terminator, when his callous cyborg character first enters the past… naked. The actor is quick to explain that while he was nude “just for a few minutes,” the rest of the movie he was fully clothed. “The body was not the most important thing,” he recalls, calling the film “an important breakthrough” in his career — not only because he was fully clothed most of the time, but also that it demanded more from him as an actor, and it was his first-ever villain role to boot.

Read More: Arnold Schwarzenegger Talks Original ‘Terminator’ Movies, ‘Twins,’ 'True Lies,’ and More

Terminator Genisys is available for pre-order now.