ARNOLD Schwarzenegger has apologised for “stepping over the line” with women in the past as he's confronted about the #MeToo movement.

The 71-year-old admits he has regrets about how he treated women in the past.

He said in an interview with Men’s Health magazine: “Looking back, I stepped over the line several times, and I was the first one to say sorry.

“I feel bad about it, and I apologize.”

In the days before winning the election to become the governor of California in 2003, Arnold had accusations of groping several women come to light.

He later apologised for “misbehaving with women” after getting elected.

The Terminator star said: “When I became governor, I wanted to make sure that no one, including me, ever makes this mistake.

“That’s why we took sexual harassment courses, to have clear understanding, from a legal point of view and also from a regular-behavior point of view, of what is accepted and what is not.”

However, Arnold says he not lost sense of who is as a man.

He added: “I’ve not changed my view (on masculinity). I’m a guy. I would not change my view of who I am.

“The woman I was originally most in love with was my mother.

“I respected her, and she was a fantastic woman. I always had respect for women.”

Arnold also has another regret from his past.

During the 2004 Republican National Convention he called his political opponents “girlie men”.

He said: “At the time it felt like the right thing to do. I called them girlie men because they weren’t willing to take risks.

“They were afraid of everything. But I was short-sighted.

“In the long term, it’s better not to say that, because you want to work with them.

Arnold was embroiled in another public scandal in 2011 after it was revealed he fathered a child with
the family housekeeper while still married to Maria Shiver.

The actor claimed he didn’t know he fathered the child, who was born in 1997, until the boy was seven or eight years old.

Maria filed for divorce two months after he came clean.