In 1977, Schwarzenegger described orgy, pot use

LOS ANGELES — In an interview with an adult magazine 26 years ago, actor Arnold Schwarzenegger, now the leading Republican candidate in California's gubernatorial recall election, described participating in an orgy, said that he smoked marijuana and used a slur for gay men.

Schwarzenegger, then a champion bodybuilder based in the anything-goes beach community of Venice, Calif., spoke at length and at times with coarse, lewd language to now-defunct Oui magazine about his sexual exploits and drug use.

He was 29 years old and single when he gave the 1977 interview, which was titled "Arnold Schwarzenegger on the Sex Secrets of Bodybuilders." The interview, which also focuses on Schwarzenegger's training routines and prowess as a bodybuilder, was reprinted this week on the Web site www.thesmokinggun.com. At the time of the interview, Schwarzenegger was starring in the documentary "Pumping Iron."

At one point in the interview, Schwarzenegger said: "Bodybuilders party a lot, and once, in Gold's — the gym in Venice, California, where the top guys train — there was a black girl who came out naked. Everybody jumped on her and took her upstairs, where we all got together."

The interviewer then asked Schwarzenegger, now married with four children, if the group of bodybuilders had sex with the woman. He said, "Yes, but not everybody," only bodybuilders who were willing to have sex in front of other men.

At another point, Schwarzenegger, a former Mr. Universe, said that men "shouldn't feel like fags just because they want to have nice-looking bodies. ... Gay people are fighting the same kind of stereotyping that bodybuilders are: People have certain misconceptions about them just as they do us."

He also said that he had smoked only "grass and hash — no hard drugs."

Asked about the comments in an interview on a Sacramento radio station Wednesday night, Schwarzenegger, who has been courting conservative voters in California, did not dispute the remarks. "I never lived my life to be a politician," he said. "I never lived my life to be the governor of California. Obviously, I've made statements that were ludicrous and crazy and outrageous and all those things, because that's the way I always was."

Since he declared his candidacy, Schwarzenegger and his political advisers have said that they expected to be faced with tabloid stories about the actor's private life or questions about his past as a young bodybuilder.

In other interviews in recent years, he has admitted taking steroids decades ago and smoking marijuana.

The campaign director for conservative Republican state Sen. Tom McClintock, who is also running in the recall election, declined yesterday to comment about Schwarzenegger's remarks in the adult magazine.

Ken Khachigian, a GOP strategist who worked in the Reagan White House and was an adviser to Rep. Darrell Issa, R-Calif., who helped bankroll the recall movement, said the interview "could be troublesome" if it becomes a broader topic of discussion.

Staff writer Dan Balz contributed to this report.