Arnold Alois Schwarzenegger (born July 30, 1947) is an Austrian and American actor, businessman, film producer, politician, and former professional bodybuilder who served as the 38th governor of California from 2003 to 2011. He is recognized as a cultural icon acting in numerous action films which have grossed over $5.4 billion worldwide. His accolades include a Primetime Emmy Award and a Golden Globe Award. He received a Motion Picture Star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame in 1984.
Schwarzenegger began lifting weights at the age of 15 and won Mr. Universe at the age of 20, and the Mr. Olympia title seven times. Nicknamed the "Austrian Oak" in his bodybuilding days, he is regarded as one of the greatest bodybuilders of all time. He wrote the autobiographical Arnold: The Education of a Bodybuilder (1977) and appeared in the bodybuilding documentary Pumping Iron (1977).
After retiring from bodybuilding, Schwarzenegger gained worldwide fame as a Hollywood action star starring as the title role in Conan the Barbarian (1982), and its sequel, Conan the Destroyer (1984) and as Terminator in The Terminator franchise (1984–2019). He also acted in the action films Commando (1985), The Running Man (1987), Predator (1987), Total Recall (1990), True Lies (1994), and Batman & Robin (1997) as well as the comedies Twins (1988), Kindergarten Cop (1990), Last Action Hero (1993) and Jingle All the Way (1996).
As a registered member of the Republican Party, Schwarzenegger chaired the President's Council on Physical Fitness and Sports during most of the George H. W. Bush administration. In 2003, he was elected governor of California in a special recall election, and later ran again where he was reelected in the 2006 gubernatorial election. In 2011, he reached his term limit as governor and returned to acting.
After a hiatus, he returned to action films starring in The Expendables films (2010–2014), Escape Plan (2013), and Maggie (2015). On television, he starred in the Netflix docu-series Arnold (2023), and action comedy series FUBAR (2023–2025). He also has written seven books including his memoir Total Recall: My Unbelievably True Life Story (2012) and is the founder of the film production company Oak Productions.
Arnold Alois Schwarzenegger was born on July 30, 1947, in Thal, Styria, the second son of Gustav Schwarzenegger and his wife, Aurelia (née Jadrny; 1922–1998). Gustav was the local chief of police and, after the Anschluss in 1938, joined the Nazi Party and in 1939 the Sturmabteilung (SA). During World War II, Gustav served as a military policeman in the invasions of Poland, France, and the Soviet Union, including the siege of Leningrad, rising to the rank of hauptfeldwebel. He was wounded in the summer of 1942 at Leningrad, later contracted malaria, and was discharged from the Heer in February 1944. He returned to service with the Ordnungspolizei as a Preisüberwachungsbeamter ("price control official") in Mürzzuschlag, Austria, and did not resume civilian law-enforcement duties until 1947.
According to Holocaust scholar Michael Berenbaum, Gustav served "in theaters of the war where atrocities were committed. But there is no way to know from the documents whether he played a role." Gustav's background received wide press attention during the 2003 California gubernatorial recall election in which Schwarzenegger was elected.
Gustav married Aurelia on October 20, 1945; he was 38 and she was 23. According to Schwarzenegger, his parents were very strict: "Back then in Austria it was a very different world ... if we did something bad or we disobeyed our parents, the rod was not spared." He was raised in a Catholic household. Gustav favored his elder son, Meinhard, over Arnold. His favoritism was "strong and blatant", stemming from an unfounded suspicion that Arnold was not his biological child. Schwarzenegger has said that his earliest childhood memory is climbing into his parents' bed during a thunderstorm and lying between them. He has also said that his father had "no patience for listening or understanding your problems". He maintained a close relationship with his mother and stayed in contact with her until her death.
In a 2004 interview with Fortune, Schwarzenegger said he suffered what "would now be called child abuse" at the hands of his father: "My hair was pulled. I was hit with belts. So was the kid next door. It was just the way it was. Many of the children I've seen were broken by their parents, which was the German-Austrian mentality. They didn't want to create an individual. It was all about conforming. I was one who did not conform, and whose will could not be broken. Therefore, I became a rebel. Every time I got hit, and every time someone said, 'You can't do this,' I said, 'This is not going to be for much longer because I'm going to move out of here. I want to be rich. I want to be somebody.'"
At school, Schwarzenegger was reportedly academically average but stood out for his "cheerful, good-humored, and exuberant" personality. He struggled with reading and was later diagnosed with dyslexia. Money was scarce in the household; Schwarzenegger recalled that one of the highlights of his youth was when the family bought a refrigerator. Gustav, an athlete, wanted his sons to become champions in Bavarian curling. Influenced by his father, Schwarzenegger played several sports as a boy.
Schwarzenegger began weight training in 1960 when his football coach took the team to a local gym. At age 14, he chose bodybuilding over football as a career. He later said, "I actually started weight training when I was 15, but I'd been participating in sports, like soccer, for years, so I felt that although I was slim, I was well-developed, at least enough so that I could start going to the gym and start Olympic lifting." His official website biography, however, states that "at 14, he started an intensive training program with Dan Farmer, studied psychology at 15 (to learn more about the power of mind over body) and at 17, officially started his competitive career." In a 2001 speech, he said, "My own plan formed when I was 14 years old. My father had wanted me to be a police officer like he was. My mother wanted me to go to trade school."
Schwarzenegger began visiting a gym in Graz, where he also frequented local movie theaters to watch films featuring bodybuilding idols such as Reg Park, Steve Reeves, and Johnny Weissmuller. When Reeves died in 2000, Schwarzenegger remembered him fondly: "As a teenager, I grew up with Steve Reeves. His remarkable accomplishments allowed me a sense of what was possible when others around me didn't always understand my dreams. Steve Reeves has been part of everything I've ever been fortunate enough to achieve." In 1961, Schwarzenegger met former Mr. Austria Kurt Marnul, who invited him to train at the gym in Graz. He was so dedicated as a teenager that he broke into the local gym on weekends to train when it was closed. "It would make me sick to miss a workout ... I knew I couldn't look at myself in the mirror the next morning if I didn't do it." When asked about his earliest cinema experience, he said: "I was very young, but I remember my father taking me to the Austrian theaters and seeing some newsreels. The first real movie I saw, that I distinctly remember, was a John Wayne movie." In Graz, he was mentored by Alfred Gerstl, who had Jewish ancestry and later became president of the Federal Council, and he befriended Gerstl's son Karl.
Schwarzenegger's brother, Meinhard, died in a car crash on May 20, 1971. He had been driving drunk and died instantly; Schwarzenegger did not attend the funeral. Meinhard was engaged to Erika Knapp, and they had a three-year-old son named Patrick. He paid for Patrick's education and helped him move to the U.S. His father, Gustav, died of a stroke on December 13, 1972. In Pumping Iron, Schwarzenegger claimed he did not attend his father's funeral because he was training for a bodybuilding contest. Later, he and the film's producer said the story had been taken from another bodybuilder to illustrate the extremes some athletes would go to for their sport and to create a colder, more controversial image for the film. However, Barbara Baker, his first serious girlfriend, recalled that he told her of his father's death without emotion and that he never spoke about his brother. Over time, he has given at least three different explanations for why he did not attend his father's funeral.