The home Arnold Schwarzenegger grew up in was, in his own word, “uptight.” His father, Gustav, was an alcoholic police chief and one-time Nazi Party member who ridiculed his younger son’s dream of bodybuilding and favored the older boy, Meinhard. Schwarzenegger later refused to attend the funerals of either his father, who died in 1972, or his brother, killed in a car crash in 1971.
Thal to America
He was born on July 30, 1947, in Thal, near Graz. His mother, Aurelia, was the warmer presence; when she died of a heart attack in 1998 he said, “With the loss of my mother, my world has fallen apart.”
Movies were his way out, especially the Hercules pictures of the bodybuilder Reg Park. They fed an obsession with America. The route there ran through Joe Weider, the man behind the International Federation of Body Building, who liked the young man’s bravado and humor. Schwarzenegger emigrated in 1968. Over his career he won five Mr. Universe titles and seven Mr. Olympia crowns, and the 1977 documentary Pumping Iron, which follows his defense of the Olympia title, pushed the sport into the mainstream. He became a U.S. citizen in 1983.
The Screen
After a few small parts, he won a Golden Globe for best newcomer for Stay Hungry in 1976. Then came the run that defined 1980s action: Conan the Barbarian in 1982, Conan the Destroyer, The Terminator in 1984, Commando, Predator, The Running Man, Total Recall, True Lies. He played for laughs in Twins and Kindergarten Cop. He came back to the Terminator role in 1991 and 2003.
In 1986 he married Maria Shriver, daughter of Eunice Kennedy Shriver and R. Sargent Shriver. A mutual friend had introduced them at a tennis tournament in 1977, and he proposed eight years in. They announced their separation in May 2011 after he acknowledged fathering a son, Joseph Baena, with Mildred Baena, a member of the household staff. The divorce was finalized in 2021.
Sacramento
In 2003 he ran for governor of California in a special election and won, a Republican promising economic stability to a state mired in budget woes. His style was blunt. Of Democrats in his first term he said: “If they don’t have the guts, I call them ‘girlie-men.’ They should go back to the table and fix the budget.” He also worked to promote new businesses and protect the environment, and he named Ronald Reagan as a lifelong inspiration.
He won reelection easily in 2006. The second term was rougher, as the state struggled through hard financial times. He left office in January 2011.
After Office
He went back to film with The Expendables in 2010 alongside Sylvester Stallone, and The Expendables 2 reached No. 1 at the box office a week after its August 2012 premiere with nearly $28.6 million. That fall his memoir, Total Recall, came out, and in it he confirmed for the first time an affair with his Red Sonja co-star Brigitte Nielsen in the mid-1980s.
The Expendables 3 followed in 2014 and Terminator Genisys in 2015. In January 2017 he replaced Trump as host of The New Celebrity Apprentice; ratings were low and he soon announced he would not return. Terminator: Dark Fate arrived in fall 2019 with Linda Hamilton, and disappointed in its opening weekend.
In March 2018, a catheter valve replacement at a Los Angeles hospital failed, and he needed emergency open-heart surgery. It went well. His spokesman said he woke with the words “I’m back.” In 2021 he produced and voiced characters in the cartoon Stan Lee’s Superhero Kindergarten, and in 2023 the Netflix series FUBAR, about a father-daughter CIA duo, became the platform’s No. 1 TV show despite middling reviews.
