Arnold Schwarzenegger is in stable condition after undergoing emergency open-heart surgery, his spokesman Daniel Ketchell told The Washington Post Friday.
TMZ, the first outlet to report the story, said the 70-year-old actor and former California governor was at Los Angeles' Cedars-Sinai Medical Center for a catheter valve replacement. When the experimental procedure resulted in complications, doctors decided to open him up.
A representative for Schwarzenegger did not immediately respond to USA TODAY's request for comment. Nor did reps for his ex-wife, Maria Shriver, or his actor son, Patrick Schwarzenegger.
Cedars-Sinai, as per federal law, would not comment.
This was Schwarzenegger's fourth cardiac surgery, though only two were intentional.
When he was 50, Schwarzenegger had an aortic valve replaced to repair a congenital condition. That 1997 operation, too, produced complications, requiring another emergency procedure.
"I was very scared," he told Barbara Walters in that year's 10 Most Fascinating Peoplespecial. "I could have died... All of a sudden, in the middle of the night, I started getting less and less air and I have problems breathing."
Schwarzenegger told Walters that the 1997 ordeal had ended well. "I feel great now, much more energetic today than I did before the operation."
Upon hearing the news, Sebastian Kurz, the chancellor of Schwarzenegger's native Austria, wished him a speedy recovery via Twitter and said he looked forward to seeing him in Vienna next month.
Schwarzenegger started out as a champion bodybuilder, then became a movie star in The Terminator films, and then got elected governor of California as a Republican in 2003.
More recently, he replaced Donald Trump, after he was elected president, as the host of the NBC's reality show, The New Celebrity Apprentice, which led to some public feuding on Twitter between the two over the show's low ratings.
Schwarzenegger tweeted a joke proposal that he and Trump exchange jobs "so that people can finally sleep comfortably again." In March 2017, Schwarzenegger announced that he would not return to the show. In a tweet, Trump claimed Schwarzenegger was fired.
Story developing.
