Arnold Schwarzenegger | Biography, Movies, Bodybuilding, & Facts | Britannica (2024)

Arnold Schwarzenegger (born July 30, 1947, Thal, near Graz, Austria) is an Austrian-born American bodybuilder, film actor, and politician who rose to fame through roles in blockbuster action movies and later served as governor of California (2003–11).

Schwarzenegger was known as the Styrian Oak, or Austrian Oak, in the bodybuilding world, where he dwarfed his competition. He won his first amateur Mr. Universe title in 1967. After moving to California in 1968 to train and compete in bigger events in the United States, he won three more Mr. Universe titles and then the professional Mr. Olympia title six years in a row (1970–75) before retiring. He surprised the bodybuilding world by returning to competition one more time to claim the Mr. Olympia title in 1980. Bodybuilding was the subject of several of his books, including the autobiographical Arnold: The Education of a Bodybuilder (1977; written with Douglas Kent Hall) and The New Encyclopedia of Modern Bodybuilding (1998; written with Bill Dobbins).

Meanwhile, Schwarzenegger pursued his childhood dream of acting in movies. In his first film, Hercules in New York (1970), Schwarzenegger played the lead, but another actor was used to dub his dialog. Schwarzenegger’s native charm and wit finally came through in the acclaimed documentary Pumping Iron (1977), which led to his starring role in Conan the Barbarian (1982). He became an international star with The Terminator (1984) and over the next 20 years appeared in two sequels (1991 and 2003). His other films during this time included Predator (1987), Kindergarten Cop (1990), Total Recall (1990), True Lies (1994), and The 6th Day (2000).

Schwarzenegger became a U.S. citizen in 1983 and married reporter Maria Shriver in 1986. During the 1990s he became increasingly active in the Republican Party at both the state and national levels, and in 2003 he was elected governor of California in a recall election. In his initial years in office, Schwarzenegger pushed for a number of restrictive measures that proved unpopular, especially with organized labour. Nevertheless, he was reelected in 2006. He earned key legislative victories on issues relating to the environment, including a landmark act to reduce greenhouse-gas emissions in California, and successfully advocated for ballot propositions to reform the state’s redistricting process and political-primary format.

At the same time, his governorship was encumbered by the state’s enormous budget deficit, which ballooned to $26 billion in 2009. Despite a battery of service reductions and salary cuts enacted to stem the fiscal crisis, the state’s economy continued to struggle, and Schwarzenegger suffered from consistently low approval ratings. Because of term limits, he did not run for reelection in 2010. In May 2011 Schwarzenegger and Shriver announced that they were separating; a few days later it was revealed that he had fathered a child with a woman who had worked in the household staff. Shriver subsequently filed for divorce.

Although Schwarzenegger had put his movie career on hiatus to devote attention to politics, in 2010 he made a cameo in The Expendables, an action film that brought together several aging stars of the genre. He also appeared in the movie’s 2012 and 2014 sequels. The Last Stand (2013) marked his first leading role in 10 years. He later starred with Sylvester Stallone in the action thriller Escape Plan (2013), took top billing in the action drama Sabotage (2014), and reprised his Terminator role in Terminator Genisys (2015) and Terminator: Dark Fate (2019).

In July 2011 a museum dedicated to Schwarzenegger’s life opened in his childhood home in Thal, Austria. The following year he published the memoir Total Recall: My Unbelievably True Life Story (written with Peter Petre).