Legendary W.A.S.P. leader Blackie Lawless spoke to Louder about his storied career with wild stories hanging with Lemmy, Gene Simmons, The Village People, Arnold Schwarzenegger and more! 

“We had just started recording The Crimson Idol,” he recalls about being considered for the second Terminator movie. “I got a call on a Friday afternoon. It was my agent, and she said they (James Cameron and Arnold Schwarzenegger) wanted to talk to me. We think Arnold had seen the Scream Until You Like It video, and I’m doing a little bit of acting in that. Apparently, they thought I would be right for the part of the T-1000 Terminator. I saw the first Terminator movie and didn’t really care for it, so I said: ‘Let me think about it. I’ll get back to you.’ I thought about it for about thirty minutes and decided: ‘Hey, dummy. What are you doing? That movie was huge whether you liked it or not. Maybe this is something I should think about doing.’

I had been around Arnold a couple of times before, at parties, and knew he was kind of sensitive about his height. I’m about four or five inches taller than he is. So I said to his casting director: ‘Do you know how tall I am?’ I told them I was six-four. The casting director said: ‘There’s no need for you to come down for the reading.’

About a year after the movie comes out, I run into Robert Patrick, who ended up with the part. I told him that they originally wanted to cast me for the part, and he gets this funny look on his face and replies: “Holy cow. You do look like him.” The original character was supposed to be this wrestling type character, a long-haired barbarian. He saw the original art script and said that I looked just like that character.

Read more at Louder.