Arnold Schwarzenegger may want to look away now (Picture: Instagram)

A Terminator actor has urged everyone to ‘not tell Arnold Schwarzenegger I said that’ after comparing him to Reacher actor Alan Ritchson.

While Arnie, 76, is arguably the most famous action hero of all time, pumping out a never-ending slew of high-octane thrillers, from Predators to last year’s Fubar, Robert Patrick has dared to suggest Alan may have taken his crown.

Robert, who was cast as villain T-1000 in Terminator 2: Judgment Day and is playing another baddie in Reacher, weighed in on bodybuilder Arnold and Alan’s physicalities and revealed that the latter, 41, was ‘bigger’.

‘Don’t tell Arnold I said that,’ he joked. ‘But right now, Alan in his present state and age, he’s bigger.’

Robert continued to Cinema Blend: ‘Alan encompasses a lot of similarities in the size of his massiveness of muscle gain. And he moves very well. And Arnold moves very well. They’re both athletic guys.’

In 2022, Alan revealed the brutal regime he follows to get ripped from the Amazon Prime series, based on the best-selling book series by Lee Child, about an itinerant former military officer who finds himself tangled up in gruesome crimes.

AlanAlan goes to extreme lengths to get in shape for Reacher (Picture: Instagram)

In the Prime series, he plays an itinerant former military officer (Picture: AP)

Speaking to Men’s Journal, the Aquaman actor explained: ‘I try to stay lean, so I’m usually walking around at 205 pounds. For this I wanted to bulk up though, and I ended up putting on 30 pounds to end up at 235 pounds. I was grinding it out five days a week for the eight months that we had to prep.’

As well as cracking out the weights to get bigger, the actor also revealed that his diet was the most important part of his prep, joking that he had ‘a conveyer belt of food’.

Alan added: ‘It’s a full-time job to get 4,500 calories and 300 grams of protein in your body. I was lucky that I had the help.’

Robert has sized up to both Alan and Arnold in TV and film projects (Picture: Getty Images)

Robert played a villain in Terminator 2: Judgement Day (Picture: CBS via Getty Images)

Similarly in 2019, a then 72-year-old Arnold revealed his intense fitness regime, that put twenty-somethings to shame, for The Terminator: Dark Fate.

He told Metro.co.uk: ‘I train every day. I ride bikes every day, I ski, I still do a lot of sports, so for me it’s a little more normal that I’ll come in and do my action movies that I’m ready and in shape,’

Speaking about the secrets of his workouts more recently last October, he revealed to The Times: ‘Calves are basically the biceps of the legs.’

Arnold began his career as a bodybuilder before going into acting(Picture: Getty Images)

Making training calves a priority, he continued: ‘It used to be the last thing I did before I left the gym, now it was the first thing I did when I came in. A thousand pounds on the calf raise machine for dozens of reps. Seven days a week.’

Arnie previously also said he felt like ‘damaged goods’ after having heart surgery shortly before turning 50.

‘This is the first time I felt kind of like vulnerable, where all of a sudden the doctor says, “You know, you shouldn’t lift that heavy anymore or just pay attention when you breathe when you exercise. Exhale, don’t keep the air pressed inside, because that is too much stress on the valves in the heart. All of a sudden there was dialogue like that.’

He told Howard Stern in 2023 however, that he wasn’t not ‘upset’ about having to think in that way when he exercises, because there’s nothing that he can do about it.

‘I just feel like as those challenges come my way, I take them on. Because it’s the only choice I have.’

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He added that now at 76 years old, he’s full of energy and enthusiasm and is as ‘enthusiastic and excited’ as he was when he was 30 years old.

Reacher is available to stream on Amazon Prime Video.

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‘Don’t tell Arnold,’ he said.