Arnold Schwarzenegger

Arnold Schwarzenegger: Three Careers, One Method

In 1988 the biggest action star on earth agreed to appear in a comedy for no salary at all. *Twins* was a gamble on the proposition that audiences would laugh with him rather than at him, and Schwarzenegger took his payment entirely in profit participation. The film became his first $100 million domestic earner and paid him over $40 million, more than any fee he had ever been offered. That transaction contains everything about him: the reading of his own limitations, the confidence that borders on arrogance, and the businessman quietly running the numbers behind the muscle.

Thal, and a Father in the Wehrmacht

Arnold Alois Schwarzenegger was born on 30 July 1947 in Thal, Styria, to Aurelia Jadrny and Gustav Schwarzenegger, the local police chief who had joined the Nazi Party and served in the Wehrmacht. The household was severe. "My hair was pulled. I was hit with belts," he told *Fortune* in 2004. "Therefore, I became a rebel." He was an average pupil, later diagnosed with dyslexia, remarkable to his teachers mainly for the force of his personality. His brother Meinhard died in a drink-driving crash in 1971 and Gustav died the following year; Schwarzenegger attended neither funeral, and has given several inconsistent explanations for the second.

The Austrian Oak

He began lifting weights in 1960 and won the NABBA Mr Universe title in 1967 at twenty, the youngest ever to take it. He moved to London to train under Wag Bennett, and in 1970, aged twenty-three, became the youngest Mr Olympia in the contest's history. He held the title through 1975, returned in 1980 to win a seventh, and that final victory, prepared in seven weeks while he was training for *Conan*, remains disputed by aficionados who thought his legs were not sharp enough. He acknowledged using anabolic steroids when they were legal, describing them in 1977 as an aid to "maintaining muscle size while on a strict diet." The documentary *Pumping Iron* (1977), which made him famous outside the sport, was partly staged; in 1991 he bought its rights, its outtakes and the photography that went with it. The sport's second-most prestigious competition is named the Arnold Classic.

A Millionaire Before Hollywood

He arrived in the United States in October 1968 with almost no English and a plan. With his friend Franco Columbu he set up a bricklaying business that boomed after the 1971 San Fernando earthquake, then a mail-order fitness company, then a property portfolio begun with a $10,000 apartment building. He was a millionaire by twenty-five, before he had a film career worth the name. He studied at Santa Monica College and through UCLA's extension programme, and took a bachelor's degree in business administration and marketing from the University of Wisconsin-Superior in 1980, largely by correspondence, flying in for examinations. He became a US citizen in 1983.

Conan to Terminator

His debut, *Hercules in New York* (1970), billed him as "Arnold Strong" and dubbed over his accent. A Golden Globe for *Stay Hungry* suggested more, and *Conan the Barbarian* (1982) made him an action star, but it was James Cameron's *The Terminator* (1984) that gave him a line, a silhouette and a career. Through the 1980s he was essentially unopposed: *Commando*, *The Running Man*, *Predator*, *Red Heat*. *Total Recall* (1990) paid him $10 million and fifteen per cent of the gross; *Terminator 2: Judgment Day* (1991) was the highest-grossing film of its year; in 1993 American theatre owners named him International Star of the Decade. Then he chose *Batman & Robin* (1997) over *The Rock*, and the decline was immediate: *End of Days*, *The 6th Day* and *Collateral Damage* all underperformed. His films have taken more than $5.4 billion worldwide.

Governor

He announced his candidacy in the 2003 California recall on *The Tonight Show*. Voters removed Gray Davis with 55.4 per cent and gave Schwarzenegger 48.6 per cent in a crowded field, seventeen points clear of Cruz Bustamante; he was sworn in that November and re-elected in 2006 with 55.9 per cent. He governed as a self-described moderate, fiscally conservative and socially liberal, and the record is genuinely mixed. He repealed a hated vehicle fee, then called a special election in November 2005 at which all four of his ballot measures were defeated and publicly took the blame. He supported domestic partnerships and performed same-sex marriages, yet vetoed marriage equality bills in 2005 and 2007, and vetoed single-payer healthcare twice. His approval peaked at 65 per cent in 2004 and stood at 23 per cent when he left in January 2011. Hours before departing he commuted the manslaughter sentence of the son of a political ally, calling it "a personal favor to a friend" and telling neither the victim's family nor the prosecutors; a Sacramento judge called it "a distasteful commutation, repugnant to the bulk of the citizenry" while ruling it within his powers. His marriage to Maria Shriver ended in 2011 after the disclosure that he had fathered a son with a member of the household staff.

AB 32 and the Second Act

The substantial achievement of the governorship was environmental. On 27 September 2006 he signed the Global Warming Solutions Act, the first statutory cap on greenhouse gas emissions in the United States, requiring a return to 1990 levels by 2020, and issued executive orders taking California into a regional emissions market and setting a 2050 target of eighty per cent below 1990. He converted his Hummers to hydrogen and biofuel and put solar panels on his house. Since leaving office he has founded R20 Regions of Climate Action, launched the annual Austrian World Summit in Vienna, and joined Emmanuel Macron in calling for a Global Pact for the Environment. He returned to acting in *The Expendables*, *The Last Stand* and two more *Terminator* films, and won an Emmy in 2014.

Why Arnold Is Called a Genius

Of all the people to whom the word is casually applied, Schwarzenegger has the least obviously intellectual claim and one of the more defensible ones. He is not a thinker. He was a mediocre student, is dyslexic, and has never pretended to erudition. What he possesses, demonstrated three times in unrelated fields, is a capacity for goal-directed self-construction that has no real equivalent in public life. He became the best bodybuilder alive, then the highest-paid actor alive, then governor of the world's fifth-largest economy, and in each case he entered as an outsider whom insiders considered a joke.

The faculty at work is strategic rather than creative. He reads accurately what a market wants and what he can supply, and he is unusually willing to be paid in the currency of the future rather than the present, which is why he took no fee for *Twins* and why he was rich from bricklaying and property before Hollywood ever paid him properly. He also understands that a persona is an asset to be managed: buying the rights and outtakes to *Pumping Iron* in 1991 is the act of a man who intends to own his own myth. And AB 32 was a genuine piece of governance, the first greenhouse gas cap in America, passed by a Republican over his own party's objections.

The counter-case is serious. His governorship ended at twenty-three per cent approval, one point above the man he replaced by recall. The Núñez commutation was a straightforward abuse of clemency for a friend. He has acknowledged the sexual misconduct allegations that surfaced in 2003, saying in 2023 that he had been "totally wrong." His acting is deliberately narrow, and the mythology around him is a product he has spent fifty years selling, which should make any biographer cautious. He is a strategist of rare quality and an ordinary man in most other respects, and he has never claimed otherwise.

Legacy

Schwarzenegger's life is the strongest available argument that a career is a thing you build rather than a thing you are given, and the strongest available warning about believing your own advertising. He left California a climate law that outlasted his reputation, cinema an unimprovable monster, and the immigrant story a version of itself so extreme that the Constitution had to be invoked to explain why he could not run for president.

Achievements

• Golden Globe Award for New Star of the Year – Actor — 1977
• WWE Hall of Fame — 2015
• Knight of the Legion of Honour
• Worked as actor, politician and film producer