10 Hit Movies Actors Thought Would Kill Their Careers

In late 1983 Arnold Schwarzenegger was practising sword choreography for his upcoming film Conan the Destroyer when his bodybuilder friend Rick Wayne noticed some shoes in the corner of his trailer and asked what they were for. "Oh, some s**t movie I'm doing in a couple of weeks" came the Austrian's disinterested response. The film, of course, was The Terminator.

In the up-and-coming actor/bodybuilder's defence he had every reason to be sceptical of this project under the eye of James Cameron. After all he had only directed one feature film to date, the American-Dutch-Italian horror film Piranha II: The Spawning, a film so bad the director has since disowned it.

Even Schwarzenegger's agents were advising him against accepting the role of a cyborg assassin as he recalls "the conventional wisdom in Hollywood is that playing a villain is career suicide". However, he enjoyed the idea of having a cooler outfit than Conan's loincloth and the prospect of $750,000 for six weeks shooting in Los Angeles was too good to turn down.

Ultimately The Terminator became one of the highest grossing films of 1984 and marked the start of the unlikely Austrian actor's career as well as his first outing as the titular Terminator. Audiences and critics agreed the role itself was a perfect fit for Schwarzenegger's one note delivery and imposing build, it was a role he would revisit many times over nearly four decades.