Patrick Schwarzenegger: Like Father, like Son

By Janet Susan R. Nepales

“The apple doesn’t fall far from the tree.”

That was what Arnold Schwarzenegger, 77, wrote on his Instagram after seeing his eldest son, Patrick Schwarzenegger, 31, bare it all on screen while playing the douchey jock Saxon Ratliff on the third season of the popular Mike White-directed TV series, “The White Lotus.”

“What a show,” the star of the 1984 “Terminator” wrote, “I could claim to be surprised to find out he has a nude scene, but what can I say – the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree.”

During Variety’s Actors on Actors series, Patrick told his father, “I’ve done it.”

To which Arnold candidly replied, “I couldn’t believe [it]. I said to myself, ‘I’m watching your show, and I’m watching your butt sticking out there.’ And all of a sudden, I saw the weenie. What is going on here? This is crazy. Then I said to myself, ‘Well, Arnold, hello. You did the same thing in ‘Conan and Terminator,’ so don’t complain about it.’ But it was a shock to me that you were following my footsteps so closely.”

The son of Arnold and journalist Maria Shriver, Patrick landed his first acting role at the age of 10, when he had a small part in the film “The Benchwarmers.” Although he graduated with a Business Administration degree from the University of Southern California with a minor in cinematic arts, it was very obvious early on that Patrick had the same passion as his father for acting.

He starred in the TV series “The Staircase” (2022), “American Sports Story” (2024) and got Hollywood’s attention in “The White Lotus” (2025).

During our interview with the cast of “The White Lotus” at a global press conference held at the Four Seasons Hotel, we asked Patrick if he had told his family about the sexy scenes.

The handsome six-foot-tall actor smiled and simply said, “Yeah, my whole family is coming to the premiere tonight, so we’ll see how that goes. They don’t know anything. I didn’t actually talk to my family at all about my character.”

He added, “Episode one is pretty safe. We actually did film some other things in episode one that didn’t make the end cut, but there are some uncomfortable conversations between us (he and co-star Sam Nivola) in the bed that are a little weird to show in front of your family. But I think that episodes five and six, there’ll be some times that I take some bathroom breaks when the family, or maybe I won’t watch that episode with, I don’t know, we’ll see.

“But they’re super excited. And yeah, I think that overall, I just put a lot of trust in Mike (White). I know we said that with the script before, but with this process, doing certain nudity stuff is, it’s different when it’s a writer or director or someone that you don’t know or don’t trust or haven’t seen their work.

“But what Mike has done with it in the past seasons and how he always loves to kind of push the envelope and continue to excite, but also to create suspense, and towards the consumers and to the viewers. I didn’t have any hesitations towards it, but to go ahead.”

The rising star will soon be seen in a romantic drama with Margaret Qualley in “Love of Your Life” and will show us his dramatic chops when he acts with Al Pacino and Charlie Heaton in the drama, “Billy Knight.”

With these coming films, and Patrick’s expressed interest in playing Christian Bale’s part in Luca Guadagnino’s remake of “American Psycho” (the casting still has to be finalized), the son may veer from his father’s path and pursue a different route as a dramatic actor.