Arnold Schwarzenegger admitted that it took several years before he found out that he fathered a child with his housekeeper, Mildred Baena.
Schwarzenegger told reporter Lesley Stahl on Sunday’s “60 Minutes” that he never even had a conversation with Mildred about their son, Joseph. Instead, after he began noticing the boy’s strong resemblance to him, around age 8, he just began giving Mildred extra money.
“I kind of put it away and just said to myself, ‘OK, I’m going to put this away. I’m going to fulfill my responsibilities,'” he tells Stahl.
He declined to say whether he has a relationship with the child, who is now about 15, and he said he didn’t want to go into any more details about his relationship with Mildred because he’s already caused his wife Maria Shriver and their four children enough pain.
“I don’t want to reawaken and kind of talk about it because it’s not going to help them. And I just want to protect them as much as I can,” he says.
Appearing on the CBS program to promote his book, “Total Recall: My Unbelievably True Life Story,” he admits that he “lied” to his wife of 25-years until the day after leaving the governor’s office.
Shriver finally confronted him during a January 2011 counseling session and he acknowledged the boy was his. Shriver later filed for divorce.
There were other deceptions, too, including a “hot affair” with actress Brigitte Nielsen while filming the 1985 film “Red Sonja,” when he and Shriver were living together. He admits to other affairs, but tells Stahl they are “something that’s obviously between Maria and me.”
Schwarzenegger says in the interview that his marriage and his family were the most important things in his life, but he caused them tremendous pain.
“So the thing that really meant the most to me kind of fell apart because of my doing,” he says in the “60 Minutes” interview. “That is something that I will always look back and say, ‘How could you have done that?’”
With AP