Arnold Schwarzenegger

Arnold Alois Schwarzenegger (; German: [ˈaʁnɔlt ˈʃvaʁtsn̩ˌʔɛɡɐ]; born July 30, 1947) is an Austrian-American actor, businessman, retired professional 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 before winning the Mr. Olympia contest seven times; he remains a prominent presence in bodybuilding and has written many books and articles on the sport. 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, as well as the sport's most charismatic and famous ambassador.Schwarzenegger gained worldwide fame as a Hollywood action film icon. After appearing 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 appeared as the title character in James Cameron's critically and commercially successful science fiction film The Terminator (1984), and subsequently played similar characters in the sequel films 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).As a Republican candidate, Schwarzenegger was first elected on October 7, 2003, in a special recall election to replace then-Governor Gray Davis, with 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. Schwarzenegger 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 35th U.S. President John F. Kennedy, in 1986. They separated in 2011 after he admitted to having fathered an illegitimate child with their housemaid in 1997, and their divorce was finalized in 2017. The name of his production company is Oak Productions.

Arnold Alois Schwarzenegger was born on July 30, 1947, in Thal, Styria, the second son of Aurelia (née Jadrny) and Gustav Schwarzenegger. His mother was of Czech descent. His paternal great-grandfather, Václav (Wenzel) Mach, was Czech, from the village of Chocov, near Mladá Vožice. Wenzel Mach had a child out of wedlock with Kunigunde Schwarzenegger. The child, Schwarzenegger's paternal grandfather, was originally named Carl Mach, but later adopted his mother's name Schwarzenegger.Schwarzenegger's father was the local chief of police and had served in World War II as a Hauptfeldwebel after voluntarily joining the Nazi Party in 1938. He was wounded in the Battle of Stalingrad, but was discharged in 1943 following a bout of malaria. He married Aurelia on October 20, 1945; he was 38 and she was 23. Later in his life, Schwarzenegger commissioned the Jewish activist group Simon Wiesenthal Center to research his father's wartime record, which came up with no evidence of Gustav being involved in war crimes during his service in the Nazi Party and Sturmabteilung (SA). Gustav's background received wide press attention during the 2003 California gubernatorial recall election in which Schwarzenegger was elected governor.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 grew up in a Catholic family who attended Mass every Sunday. Gustav had a preference for his elder son, Meinhard, over Arnold. His favoritism was "strong and blatant", which stemmed from unfounded suspicion that Arnold was not his biological child. Schwarzenegger has said that his father had "no patience for listening or understanding your problems". He had a good relationship with his mother, with whom he kept in touch until her death.