Arnold Schwarzenegger Opens Up About His Son Joseph, Talks Patrick and Miley Cyrus Split

My family is "fantastic," Schwarzenegger says in a new interview

Photo: Isa Foltin/Getty

Arnold Schwarzenegger opened up to talk show host Howard Stern on Wednesday about his split from Maria Shriver, his child with his former housekeeper Mildred Baena, and his son Patrick‘s relationship with Miley Cyrus.

The Terminator Genisys star told Stern on his SiriusXM radio show that his 2011 split from Shriver was one of the biggest failures of his life.

“Without any doubt. Not only failure, but you feel like, ‘I’m to blame for it. It was me that screwed up,’ ” Schwarzenegger said.

The 67-year-old admitted in 2011 to fathering a love child with Baena more than 10 years prior. The child, Joseph Baena, is now 17.

Schwarzenegger says trying therapy with Shriver, who moved out of their home in 2011 after the news broke, was the biggest mistake of his life.

“He said more crap and more nonsense. It was absolutely counterproductive to our future relationship … I don’t have to go through anyone to have to explain to me anything … I apologized to Maria. I apologized to the kids,” said Schwarzenegger, who has four children with Shriver: Patrick, 21, Christopher, 17, Katherine, 25, and Christina, 23.

“It is fantastic,” the star added of his family, “including my fifth child with Mildred.”

“He’s terrific and he totally understands the situation. So, it all has worked out … It’s a very tough situation for him. It’s a very tough situation for my kids, very tough situation for my family. It was tough for everybody. But it has happened and now we have to figure it out, right?”

One of Schwarzenegger’s children, model and actor Patrick, recently had a split of his own, with pop star Cyrus.

But there are no hard feelings, says Schwarzenegger.

“Under normal circumstances maybe I would be nervous, but I’ll tell you the two reasons why not,” he explained. “One is my kids are very strong. They have had their upbringing. They know exactly how far they can go and they should be adventurous, they should venture out and meet different people, so I was not worried about that.”

“The other thing is when I did meet Miley Cyrus, when she came up to Sun Valley skiing during the holidays, I found out that she was a fantastic person.”

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He added that Cyrus bought gifts for the little kids on the family’s holiday trip to Idaho and that she gave them her undivided attention.

She’s a “wonderful person,” he said. “She has this career side where she has to be a little bit out there and maybe is a little bit different because she grew up in a music family. So what? It didn’t bother me. I think Patrick had a wonderful experience, he had a great relationship and then the whole thing eventually fell apart.”