Audiences moved on to other action heroes, but in 2011, he came back to Hollywood determined to reassert his dominance. As his stardom was starting to stall in the early 21st century, he not only got into politics, he became the governor of California, winning the 2003 recall election - a feat that seemed just as unlikely as his previous cinematic ambitions. Then once he reached the top of the mountain, he kept dreaming. ![]() America loves an underdog story, and Schwarzenegger’s was one of the entertainment industry’s most likable: Nobody believed he could be a star, so he kept applying himself until he could no longer be denied. When the ’80s swept in, he found his niche, playing muscular, unreal cinematic titans in the Conan movies and The Terminator before transitioning to comedies with 1988’s Twins, which cheekily mocked his brawny physique. Born in 1947, he saw America as the land of opportunity, and he diligently pursued his superstar aspirations, first landing a bit part in Robert Altman’s 1973 revisionist noir The Long Goodbye and then slowly working his way up to larger parts by the end of the decade. It turned out Schwarzenegger was Hollywood’s biggest dreamer. Best of all, I got to send photographs home to my parents and write, ‘You see? I told you the whole thing was going to work. ![]() “tarring as Hercules was way beyond any dream for me,” he wrote. Plus, his thick Austrian accent forced the filmmakers to dub all his dialogue, and the production company went broke, guaranteeing that just about nobody could see the dopey fantasy comedy in which he played the Roman demigod come down to Earth. “obody could pronounce Schwarzenegger … it was a ludicrous name,” he observed in his memoir Total Recall. When bodybuilder Arnold Schwarzenegger plotted his move to Hollywood to become an actor, he was pressured into changing his last name for his first film, 1970’s Hercules in New York.
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