Arnold Schwarzenegger on His Affair With the Housekeeper: 'It Was Terrible'

Former California governor Arnold Schwarzenegger released his autobiography, Total Recall: My Unbelievably True Life Story, in the first week of October 2012 — and ahead of its publication sat down for his first television interview about the scandal that had ended his marriage: the long-ago affair with the family's housekeeper, Mildred Baena, with whom he fathered a son, Joseph.

The interview aired on 60 Minutes on Sunday, September 30, with correspondent Lesley Stahl. Schwarzenegger called the affair terrible — the great failure of his marriage to Maria Shriver, who separated from him in May 2011 after the story broke. He had confessed to Shriver in a counseling session, after she confronted him with reporting by the Los Angeles Times that connected the dots between Baena's son and the former governor.

The memoir, co-written with Peter Petre, ranges from the bodybuilding years and Hollywood stardom to the Sacramento governorship — but it was the personal reckoning that made headlines. Schwarzenegger wrote that he takes responsibility and has no excuses, and said he still hopes for reconciliation with Shriver in some form. What the book tour made clear, though, was that the toughest questions of that autumn weren't about policy or movies. They were about character.

This is an archive of the original 2012 post, completed from the truncated draft.