US actor Patrick Schwarzenegger has said he contemplated using an alias to stop people from comparing him with his famous father.
The 31-year-old from California is known for playing Saxon Ratcliff in series three of dark comedy The White Lotus, and said the show’s creator, Mike White, told him his surname comes with “baggage”.
Speaking to his father, Arnold Schwarzenegger, as part of Variety’s Actors On Actors series, he said: “I think Mike was worried about, if he casted me, what other people would think, which they did, they did care about that.
“You know, people said, Oh, I got the role just because of you, or mum, or whatever that is.
“And I think Mike was a little bit kind of apprehensive at first about that.
“There were times earlier in my career where I was wondering ‘Does it make sense to go under some sort of alias? Does it make sense to go under a different name. Do I just use Schwarzenegger? Does that add to comparison? Does that… whatever’.
“And ultimately, I mean, what you’ve done with your last name and what you’ve built is, it is incredible.
“It took a while for me to get to a point where I was less worried about like, comparison and living in your shadow, versus me just wanting to carve my own path and wanting to do it the way that I thought I should do it, and kind of taking the baby steps and slowly growing my career over the 10 years.
“Then you have a project like this that just kind of makes it boom.”
Arnold said: “I’m grateful you kept the name because now I can take credit – ‘My son, the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree’. Those kind of lines that I’m using now.
“You basically now (have) joined this short list of people, of actors in Hollywood that had famous parents. Jamie Lee Curtis, you know, with Tony Curtis.
“The list goes on and on and on, and all of them benefited and also of course had to show that they had talent.”
He added: “I think that if you show that you have the substance, you can get rid of this whole idea of nepotism.
“Just show that you have substance and I think that everyone recognises that now.”
Arnold, 77, a former governor of California, was a bodybuilder before he ventured into acting, breaking through with action adventure epic Conan The Barbarian (1982) before his most notable role as the Terminator, in 1984.
