Despite growing up in a small, unheard-of village in Austria, actor and politician Arnold Schwarzenegger set his sights on the seemingly outlandish dreams of becoming not only the most successful bodybuilder ever, but a famous movie star as well. At 15 years old, Schwarzenegger began a rigorous weightlifting regimen that quickly bulked up his muscles and turned him into a world class bodybuilder who went on to win seven Mr. Olympia titles, making good on the first of his long-held ambitions. As he moved to the United States to start an acting career, Schwarzenegger displayed his considerable business acumen, wisely investing his money in real estate which afforded him the ability to turn down roles that might have otherwise undermined his fledgling career. Though technically he made his feature debut in the little-seen Hercules in New York (1970), his official entry into Hollywood was a supporting role in the sports drama, Stay Hungry (1976). Schwarzenegger earned considerable notoriety for his participation in Pumping Iron (1977), a documentary on the lead-up to his eventual sixth-straight victory as Mr. Olympia. Transitioning deftly into acting, he broke the mold for action heroes in the 1980s with movies like Conan the Barbarian (1982) and The Terminator (1984), both highly successful films that established him as the biggest action star in the world.
Schwarzenegger subsequently went on to redefine the genre with Predator (1987) and Total Recall (1990), while managing to appeal to wider audiences with sly comedic roles in Twins (1988) and Kindergarten Cop (1990). Perhaps most significantly, Schwarzenegger married Maria Owings Shriver, daughter of Eunice Kennedy Shriver and niece to fallen president John F. Kennedy. Despite his unabashed Republican affiliation, Schwarzenegger fit in nicely with the countrys most prominent Democratic family. Meanwhile, he continued to thrive as the leading action hero in Hollywood, though his critics often lamented the unnecessary amount of violence in his movies, while deriding his wooden performances an echo of his nickname the Austrian Oak from his bodybuilding days. As he entered the 1990s, Schwarzenegger seemed assured of his stature, especially after his winning performance in Terminator 2: Judgment Day (1991), one of the most successful action movies of all time. He also had a fun turn as a spy hiding out as a family man in True Lies (1994), but his days as the top-grossing star in Hollywood was on the wane, thanks to such duds as Batman & Robin (1997), End of Days (1999) and The 6th Day (2000). With fortuitous timing, Schwarzenegger was able to avoid becoming a box office has-been by reinventing himself as a politician when he became the Governor of California in 2003. With his film career largely on hold, Schwarzenegger served two terms as governor with some ups and many downs, including several key defeats in special elections. Despite his problems as the Governator, Schwarzenegger proved by example that all anyone needed to succeed in anything sports, Hollywood, business, politics was the drive to realize ones dreams.
Born on July 30, 1947 in the small village of Thal, Austria, Schwarzenegger was raised by his father, Gustav, a former police chief, and his mother, Aurelia. Prior to Schwarzeneggers birth, his father voluntarily applied for membership to the Nazi party in 1938. Several months later, he was a member of the Sturmabteilungen, the notorious paramilitary group known as the brownshirts, at a time when they were utilized to drive Jewish citizens from their homes and into concentration camps, though no records existed that proved his father ever participated in any war crimes. Once the war was in full swing, his father served as a military policeman with German Army units in some of the most brutal battles where atrocities were committed. Apparently wounded at some point, Gustav left the military in 1943, married war widow, Aurelia, who had a son, Meinhard, and resumed his police career in 1947. Schwarzeneggers parents were strict and authoritarian, and often punished both boys with beatings and other forms of physical abuse. But to hear him speak of it later, Schwarzenegger shrugged off such discipline. As an energetic, out-going youth, he was a middle-of-the-road student and above-average sportsman who was steered towards soccer at a young age by his father. But the young Schwarzenegger had bigger dreams in mind.
When he was 15 years old, Schwarzenegger put aside playing sports, much to his parents dismay, to take up bodybuilding. In just a few short years, the already athletic Schwarzenegger had bulked up to competition level by intensely focusing his energies on lifting weights. In 1965, he won his first title, Junior Mr. Europe, which he followed the next year with an adult Mr. Europe crown. Moving on to competitions outside of Germany, he won several amateur titles before taking up permanent residence in the United States in 1967 and becoming Mr. Universe two years later. In his quest to become the greatest bodybuilder of all time, Schwarzenegger set his sites on winning the Mr. Olympia crown, the highest accolade the sport had to offer. Though he lost to three-time champion, Sergio Oliva in 1969, he returned the next year to win his first Mr. Olympia crown, a feat he repeated for six straight titles. As he helped popularize the sport, Schwarzenegger began taking his first steps into acting, starring in his first feature, Hercules in New York (1970), in which he played the titular character who is cast from Mount Olympus by his father, Zeus, and sent to the Big Apple to make it on his own. At the time, he was credited as Arnold Strong the result of producers being afraid audiences would be unable to pronounce his name while his thick Austrian accent was overdubbed with another actors voice. The original audio track was restored when the film was re-released after he became famous.
As he continued his reign as Mr. Olympia, Schwarzenegger kept making strides in acting, appearing as a thug for a gangster (Mark Rydell) in Robert Altmans contemporary ode to film noir, The Long Goodbye (1973). Following his fifth straight Mr. Olympia title in 1974, he played a variation of himself in Stay Hungry (1976), an offbeat comedy by Bob Rafelson about a rich kid from the South (Jeff Bridges) who becomes fascinated a bunch of weightlifters at a popular gym, including Joe Santo (Schwarzenegger), who is in training for a world-class competition. Though Schwarzenegger had already starred in a feature film, Stay Hungry marked his official debut. Meanwhile, he gained his first true notoriety for his participation in the weightlifting documentary, Pumping Iron (1977), in which director George Butler followed the training routines of competitors like Schwarzenegger, Lou Ferrigno and Franco Columbu on the road to the 1975 Mr. Olympia competition. Though considerably slimmed down from filming Stay Hungry, Schwarzeneggers charm and quick wit was on full display, as he was shown playing mind games with his fellow competitors while bulking up for the competition. Memorable for his comparison of weightlifting to having an orgasm, Schwarzenegger also lived on in infamy for admitting on camera that he had taken steroids when they were still legal and ending the film following his sixth consecutive victory announcing his retirement, eating fried chicken and cake, and smoking what appeared to be marijuana.
Also in 1977, Schwarzenegger won a Golden Globe Award for New Star of the Year for his performance in Stay Hungry. But instead of capitalizing on his new fame, he receded a bit into the shadows to finish earning his bachelors degree in business and international economics at the University of Wisconsin-Superior. By that time, Schwarzenegger was already a successful businessman, having wisely invested his money in real estate. His success in business allowed him the comfort of turning down film and television projects he felt unworthy of his efforts. In his one-and-only television movie, he played Mickey Hargitay in The Jayne Mansfield Story (CBS, 1980), the real life bodybuilder and former Mr. Universe who was married to the titular starlet (Loni Anderson). True blockbuster success for the actor was just around the corner. He next starred in the first of several sword-and-sorcery sagas, Conan the Barbarian (1982), in which he played a former slave turned into a killing machine who hunts down Thulsa Doom (James Earl Jones), the man who killed his family as a child. Pulpy, violent and occasionally outlandish, Conan the Barbarian was a hit for Schwarzenegger and helped propel him into later stardom.
After starring in the less admired sequel, Conan the Destroyer" (1984), Schwarzenegger's quest for stardom was completed when he starred in the futuristic sci-fi thriller, The Terminator (1984). Schwarzenegger played a relentless, nearly indestructible cyborg sent from the year 2029 to terminate a seemingly ordinary waitress (Linda Hamilton) in 1984, who later gives birth to the leader of a resistance movement against machines that have taken over and destroyed much of the world. The combination of his physique, stoic expressions and thick Austrian accent made him the perfect choice to play the futuristic assassin. At no point in the film was that truer than when he tracked down his target to a police station, inquired into her whereabouts with the desk sergeant and uttered the immortal line, Ill be back. The modestly-budgeted film was a hit and secured his status as an international star, while establishing the careers of director James Cameron and producer Gale Ann Hurd. Most importantly, The Terminator set the pace for many of the violent action-adventure, special effects-driven movies that dominated the market in the 1980s, with Schwarzenegger leading the charge as the genres most popular and profitable star.
Schwarzenegger returned to the sword-and-sorcery world for Red Sonja (1985), a best-forgotten action-adventure entry in which he played an ancient warrior who teams with a female sword master (Bridgette Nielsen) to avenge the death of her family almost an exact replica of Conan the Barbarian. In Commando (1985), he combined goofy one-liners with piled-up bodies as a retired colonel who must save his 10-year-old daughter (Alyssa Milano) from a Latin American dictator before she is killed. He next starred in Raw Deal (1986), playing a former FBI agent tasked with tearing down the Mafia from within. Though not without its charms, Raw Deal marked the third turkey in a row for the action star the result of which could be career death for mere mortals. While his career hit a bump in the road, Schwarzeneggers personal life brightened when he married Maria Shriver, an NBC journalist and one of the numerous members of the famed Kennedy family. Despite his Republican politics and his action star status, Schwarzenegger found himself inside the United States preeminent political family something childhood friends said he stated as one of three goals in life; all accomplished: to move to America, become a famous movie star, and to marry a Kennedy.
At the time of his marriage, Schwarzenegger was in the middle of filming what many considered to be one of his top action movies, Predator (1987), a would-be action thriller that turns on a dime to become a futuristic horror thriller. He played the leader of a crack military unit sent into the jungles of Latin America to rescue two Americans held hostage by local guerillas. But as they make their way back to the rendezvous point, his unit is taken out one-by-one by an invisible otherworldly hunter picking them off for sport. Though critically maligned at the time of its release, Predator has aged like a fine wine, earning its way onto numerous lists as being one of the best action movies ever made. The film also spawned a sequel in 1990. Also that year, he starred in the dystopian satire, The Running Man (1987), a mediocre-at-best yarn that starred Schwarzenegger as an ex-cop whos put on a sadistic game show where alleged criminals are forced to outrun expert killers on live television.
The following year, Schwarzenegger began to step away from his action hero image when he starred in the affecting comedy, Twins (1988), playing the intellectual and spiritual half of fraternal siblings who is reunited with his brother (Danny DeVito), a streetwise, but shady hustler. Though the jokes were largely built around the obvious physical differences between the leads, Twins nonetheless proved to be a big hit with audiences, with Schwarzenegger ably handling the straight-man role opposite DeVito. He returned to action-comedy fare with Red Heat (1988), playing a Russian cop who goes to Chicago and teams up with a smart-mouthed cop (James Belushi) to track down a Russian drug dealer. Despite his feet being firmly planted in Hollywood, Schwarzenegger never lost his connection to the world of bodybuilding. In 1989, he formed the Arnold Classic, later renamed Arnold Fitness Weekend, an annual bodybuilding competition that featured both male and female contestants. The event was expanded to include a host of other competitive sports, including dance, gymnastics, martial arts, while becoming one of the most prominent stops on the bodybuilding circuit.
Schwarzenegger began the next decade as the biggest action star of the 1980s and managed to maintain that trend for a short while longer with perhaps the most intriguing film of his career, Total Recall (1990), a futuristic sci-fi actioner loosely based on a story by Philip K. Dick. Schwarzenegger played a seemingly normal blue-collar worker with a beautiful wife (Sharon Stone) and nice apartment, but who obsesses over going to Mars. His drive to travel to the red planet leads him to implanting a chip in his mind that grants him the memory of having traveled without actually going anywhere. But he soon discovers that the real implanted memory is his domesticated life; hes really a secret agent deemed a threat to the government and sent to Earth with a new identity. Most critics gave the film solid praise while audiences helped make Total Recall one of the highest grossing movies of the year. Meanwhile, Schwarzenegger successfully softened his image with Kindergarten Cop (1990), playing a police officer working undercover as a kindergarten teacher in order to trap the fugitive father of a student. The mildly affecting comedy proved to be another hit.
His kinder, gentler persona in Kindergarten Cop signaled a sea change in Schwarzeneggers career following a decade that saw him rack up an impressive body count onscreen and earn the studios over $1 billion in worldwide box office grosses. He attempted to pull off the feat of being both gentle and badass in the long-awaited sequel, Terminator 2: Judgment Day (1991), arguably the high water mark of his caeer. With a budget estimated as high as $95 million, James Cameron's "Terminator 2 was a monster in price, scope and special effect technology compared to the $6.5 million original. Sent back in time to protect John Connor (Edward Furlong) from a new and highly-advanced terminator (Robert Patrick), Schwarzeneggers outdated Terminator becomes something of a father figure to the young boy who will eventually grow up to lead the resistance against the machines. Critically acclaimed from all corners and a huge box office success, T2 cemented Schwarzeneggers status as one of Hollywoods greatest action heroes of all time while affirming his place as the top box office draw of the last decade a distinction that suddenly began to diminish after T2. Meanwhile, he took a brief turn into directing, helming an episode of "Tales from the Crypt" (HBO, 1989-1996) and the made-for-cable movie remake of "Christmas in Connecticut" (TNT, 1992), starring Dyan Cannon, Kris Kristofferson and Tony Curtis.
In 1991, Schwarzenegger entered into a high-profile business venture with fellow action stars Bruce Willis and Sylvester Stallone to open the Planet Hollywood restaurant in New York City. Modeled closely on the Hard Rock Caf
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