Arnold Alois Schwarzenegger (/ˈʃvɑːrtsnɛɡər/; German: [ˈaʁnɔlt
ˈʃvaʁtsn̩ˌʔɛɡɐ]; born July 30, 1947) is an
Austrian-American actor, businessman, retired bodybuilder, and former
politician who served as the 38th Governor of California from 2003 to
2011. As of 2021, he is the most recent Republican governor of
California. Schwarzenegger began lifting weights at the age of 15 and
went on to win the Mr. Universe title at age 20, subsequently winning
the Mr. Olympia contest seven times; he remains a prominent figure in
bodybuilding, and has written many books and articles on it. The
Arnold Sports Festival, considered the second-most important
bodybuilding event after Mr. Olympia, is named after him. He is widely
regarded as one of the greatest bodybuilders of all time, if not the
greatest, as well as the sport's most charismatic and famous
ambassador. After retiring from bodybuilding, Schwarzenegger gained
worldwide fame as a Hollywood action film star. Having previously
appeared in the bodybuilding documentary Pumping Iron (1977), his
breakthrough film was the sword-and-sorcery epic Conan the Barbarian
(1982), a box-office hit that resulted in a sequel in 1984. He then
appeared as the title character in the critically and commercially
successful sci-fi film The Terminator (1984), and subsequently played
similar characters in the sequels Terminator 2: Judgment Day (1991),
Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines (2003), Terminator Genisys (2015),
and Terminator: Dark Fate (2019). He also starred in other successful
action films such as Commando (1985), The Running Man (1987), Predator
(1987), 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), and one mixed
action/thriller-based comedy, Red Heat (1988).[6] He 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. He
received 48.6% of the vote, 17 points ahead of Democrat runner-up Cruz
Bustamante. He 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, he reached his term limit as Governor and returned
to his career in 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. He married Maria Shriver,
the niece of President John F. Kennedy, in 1986. They separated in
2011 after he admitted to having fathered a child with their housemaid
in 1997, and their divorce was finalized in 2017.
