1. Arnold Alois Schwarzenegger was born on July 30, 1947, in the village of Thal, Austria. He was the second son of Gustav, a police chief, and Aurelia Schwarzenegger.
2. He won the titles Mr. Universe three times and Mr. Olympia seven times.
3. Schwarzenegger moved to the United States in the late 1960s to continue competitive bodybuilding, and he became a U.S. citizen in 1983.
4. His first movie role was in the low-budget Hercules in New York (1970). He secured his crossover fame with the Terminator franchise (1984, 1991, and 2003), Total Recall (1990), and True Lies (1994). He makes a cameo appearance in Sylvester Stallone's The Expendables, out this month.
5. He married television journalist Maria Shriver, a member of the Kennedy family political dynasty, in 1986. They have four children.
6. He has supplemented his body-building and filmmaking wealth with real estate and other ventures, including as a celebrity cofounder of the Planet Hollywood restaurant chain.
7. Schwarzenegger is author of books and workout guides, including Arnold: The Education of a Bodybuilder.
8. In 1992, he bought the first Hummer manufactured for civilian use. Now, his four Hummers have been converted to run on alternative fuels such as hydrogen or biodiesel.
9. In 2003, California Gov. Gray Davis faced a special recall election, and Schwarzenegger, a moderate Republican, won with 48.6 percent of the vote. He became the state's 38th governor.
10. Schwarzenegger acts as a global ambassador for Special Olympics, a program championed by his late mother-in-law, Eunice Kennedy Shriver.
-See which industries give the most to Congress.
Sources:
- gov.ca.gov
- nytimes.com
- Imdb.com
- schwarzenegger.com