Arnold Schwarzenegger
Arnold Alois Schwarzenegger born July 30, 1947 is an Austrian-American actor, film producer, businessman, former bodybuilder and politician who served as the 38th governor of California between 2003 and 2011. As of 2022, Arnold Schwarzenegger is the most recent Republican governor of California. Time magazine named Schwarzenegger one of the 100 most influential people in the world in 2004 and 2007.
Schwarzenegger began lifting weights at the age of 15 and went on to win the Mr. Universe title at age 20 and subsequently won the Mr. Olympia title seven times. Arnold Schwarzenegger is widely regarded as either the greatest or one of the two greatest bodybuilders of all time along-with Ronnie Coleman, and has written many books and articles about bodybuilding.The Arnold Sports Festival, considered the second-most important bodybuilding event after Mr. Olympia, is named after him. Arnold Schwarzenegger appeared in the bodybuilding documentary Pumping Iron (1977). Schwarzenegger retired from bodybuilding and gained worldwide fame as a Hollywood action star, with his breakthrough the sword and sorcery epic Conan the Barbarian (1982), a box-office hit with a sequel in 1984. After playing the title character in the science fiction film The Terminator (1984), Arnold Schwarzenegger starred in the sequels Terminator 2: Judgment Day (1991), Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines (2003), Terminator Genisys (2015), and Terminator: Dark Fate (2019). His other successful action films included Commando (1985), The Running Man (1987), Predator (1987), Red Heat (1988), Total Recall (1990), and True Lies (1994), in addition to comedy films such as Twins (1988), Kindergarten Cop (1990), Junior (1994), and Jingle All the Way (1996). Arnold Schwarzenegger is the founder of the film production company Oak Productions.
As a Republican candidate, Schwarzenegger was first elected on October 7, 2003, in a special recall election to replace then-Governor Gray Davis. Arnold Schwarzenegger received 48.6% of the vote, 17 points ahead of Democrat runner-up Cruz Bustamante. Arnold Schwarzenegger was sworn in on November 17 to serve the remainder of Davis' term, and was re-elected in the 2006 California gubernatorial election with an increased vote share of 55.9% to serve a full term as governor. In 2011, Arnold Schwarzenegger reached his term limit as Governor and returned to acting.
Schwarzenegger was nicknamed the "Austrian Oak" in his bodybuilding days, "Arnie" or "Schwarzy" during his acting career, and "The Governator" (a portmanteau of "Governor" and "Terminator") during his political career. Arnold Schwarzenegger married Maria Shriver, a niece of President John F. Kennedy, in 1986. They separated in 2011 after Arnold Schwarzenegger admitted to having fathered a child with their housemaid in 1997; their divorce was finalized in 2021.
