Despite Arnold Schwarzenegger’s fame in body-building, politics, and Hollywood, the actor’s life was marred by infidelity, which he regrets to this day. After his marriage with Maria Shriver in 1986, the actor found himself in the web of a sexual scandal with the family housekeeper, Mildred Baena, which resulted in the birth of a son, Joseph Baena, in 1997 and the break up of his family years later.
In his latest Netflix docu-series, Arnold, the actor detailed that the most challenging time of his life was the moment he came clean to his ex-wife about his affair and his reason for making the decision. The actor also expressed regret about his infidelity in an interview in 2014. “I’m least proud of the mistakes I made that caused my family pain and split us up,” he confessed.
Arnold Schwarzenegger says his ex-wife Maria Shriver was devastated by the news
Schwarzenegger revealed in the teaser that, at first, he was unsure that Mildred Baena was carrying his child, so he kept the affair a secret. “I had an affair in 1996. In the beginning, I really didn’t know [he was my child]. I just started feeling,” he confessed, “the older he got, the more it became clear to me. Then it was really just a matter of, ‘How do you keep this quiet? How do you keep this a secret?’”
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At a point when his marriage to Shriver was failing, the couple decided to seek professional help, and during one of the therapy sessions, he told his wife about the affair. “Maria and I went to counseling once a week,” Schwarzenegger reflected. “And in one of the sessions, the counselor said, ‘I think Maria wants to be very specific about something. She wants to know if you are the father of Joseph.’ And I thought my heart stopped, and then I told the truth. ‘Yes, Maria, Joseph is my son.’ She was crushed because of that.”
at the 70th Academy Awards.
He still regrets the affair to date
Schwarzenegger expressed his ongoing hesitation in discussing the scandal, even after more than a decade has passed. “Every time I do, it opens up the wounds again,” he admitted. “I think that I have caused enough pain for my family because of my f–k up. Because of that, everyone had to suffer, Maria had to suffer, the kids had to suffer, Joseph, his mother, everyone.”
“I am going to have to live with it the rest of my life. People will remember my successes and they will also remember my failures. This is a major failure,” Schwarzenegger concluded. “I had failures in the past in my career, but this is a whole different ball game, dimension of failure.”