Bucking convention and emerging victorious is Arnold Schwarzenegger's forte.

Nobody gave him half a chance of making the move from an Austrian bodybuilder, with an almost impenetrable accent, to becoming one of Hollywood's biggest stars.

But he did.

Then again in a country where a World Wrestling Federation bully like Jesse 'The Body' Ventura can become governor of Minnesota and a star of B-grade movies like Ronald Reagan can become the President, anything is possible.

Now Schwarzenegger expects to become the next governor of California.

He will run in an Oct 7 election which is being held in a popular attempt to recall the unpopular current governor, Mr Gray Davis, from office.

Like the Hollywood star he is, Schwarzenegger announced his candidacy on Jay Leno's The Tonight Show on Wednesday night.

But on his first day as a candidate, he was already behaving like a politician. He sidestepped hard questions and played to the audience with promises of 'Pumping Up' Sacramento and bidding 'hasta la vista' to Mr Davis.

In response to a reporter's question about how he would solve the state's budget crisis, he said: 'We will have a plan very soon, a detailed plan, on how to face those kinds of problems and how to solve those kinds of problems.'

Schwarzenegger grew up the son of a police officer, who - one biography of the actor has said - was a member of the Nazi Party.

He got into bodybuilding at age 15 because he wanted to join the Austrian soccer team.

At 20, he won his first Mr Universe title - one of more than a dozen world bodybuilding titles he would capture, earning the nickname 'the Austrian Oak'.

In 1968, he moved to the United States to embark on his film career. He admits he occasionally lived the life of a playboy: chasing women and living fast and loose.

In the 2002 unedited release of the 1977 documentary Pumping Iron, which follows his training in preparation to defend his Mr Olympia bodybuilding title, Schwarzenegger is seen smoking marijuana - something he said he did not want cut out of the re-release.

'I did smoke a joint and I did inhale,' he once said in a poke at former president Bill Clinton. 'The bottom line is that's what it was in the 1970s, that's what I did. I have never touched it since.'

From a bit part in 1970s Hercules Goes To New York, Schwarzenegger starred in the hit movie Conan the Barbarian.

He became a US citizen in 1983 and, a year later, his box office success in the first of the Terminator films propelled him to international fame.

While he is responsible by one count for nearly 300 on-screen murders, he was also pregnant and gave birth in one picture.

In recent years, though, his drawing power has declined. Movies like Collateral Damage, The 6th Day and End Of Days barely earned enough money at the box office to pay his inflated salary. Even his most current third term as a robot in Terminator 3: The Rise Of The Machines, has failed to break even.

Younger audiences have turned to the action heroes of The Matrix Reloaded and the Pirates Of The Caribbean. So, like other fading film stars before him, notably Mr Reagan, Schwarzenegger is throwing his muscle into the political arena.

His political life began to take shape in earnest shortly after he married TV journalist Maria Shriver, niece of President John F Kennedy, in 1986.

In 1988, he campaigned in the Midwest with then Vice-President George H.W. Bush, who later named him chairman of the President's Council on Physical Fitness.

He also earned a University of Wisconsin correspondence degree in business. He has owned restaurants and buildings, many of them along Santa Monica's Main Street. And he has embraced education as a cause.

He and his wife have four children, who range in age from five to 13.

His private life is now certain to be the subject of intense media scrutiny. His widely reported womanising and nude poses during his bodybuilding days are likely to receive wide publicity.

'I know they're going to throw everything at me, (that) I have no experience, (that) I'm a womaniser and a terrible guy,' he admitted.

But he has clearly decided not to let that hold him back. With his track record, he is already regarded as a strong candidate to become governor of California.

Or, as he likes to put it, to be the 'Governator'.