The 74-year-old actor suffered mistreatment and rejection by his parents for his vocation.
Arnold Schwarzenegger has been one of the most iconic figures in cinema for decades, but his own life could well be the script for a movie. A few days after turning 74, we review the complex childhood and adolescence of the actor.
Born in Austria in 1947, his father was Gustav, a strict police chief who expected his son to follow in his footsteps. While Aurelia, Arnold's mother, wanted him to study at a university, the young man had aspirations that had nothing to do with those of his parents: he wanted to be a bodybuilder.
At 14 years old, his room was filled with posters of muscular men, the inspiration that Arnold Schwarzenegger needed to achieve his goal. However, his parents thought that those photos meant something else. Believing the teen was gay, his mother took him to the doctor.
His father, on the other hand, chose to apply force: he subjected his son to physical abuse because he disapproved of his wishes to dedicate himself to bodybuilding. Gustav's history of violence, however, had not started with Arnold.
Gustav Schwarzenegger had been an active member of the Nazi party and had played an important role as a policeman during World War II. It wasn't until he became famous that Arnold learned about his father's past.
In the early 1990s, when the issue came to light, the actor himself asked the Simon Wiesenthal Center, dedicated to documenting and registering victims and war criminals during the Holocaust, to investigate his father. After learning of Gustav's ties to Nazism, Arnold expressed feeling ashamed.
When his father died in 1972, he did not attend his funeral. Although it was said that it was because he was busy training, in 2004 Arnold confirmed to "Fortune" that he had to do with the abuse he had been subjected to in his childhood.
But before fame came, the then-wannabe bodybuilder worked with determination, bordering on obsession. He trained every day and, when he couldn't do it, he avoided looking in the mirror because he didn't like what he saw.
In 1967, at just 20 years old, he became the youngest man to win the Mr. Universe title. That triumph was the passport to an unexpected life.
As he continued to compete and work on his body, he began to land a few small roles in Hollywood. In addition to his muscles, he must have perfected his thick Austrian accent. In his first film, "Hercules in New York" (1969), they had to dub his voice.
After the success of "Conan, the Barbarian" in 1982, he would get the role that would make him the movie star he is today: "Terminator" (1984). Established in the '90s as one of the most popular actors, in 2003 he gave another unexpected turn to his life, when he ran for governor of California, completing two terms.
In recent years, already away from public office, he returned to the cinema, highlighting his return to his most famous character in "Terminator: Hidden Fate" (2019).
His personal life had nothing to do with that of his parents, but that was not why it was exempt from scandals. After 25 years married to Maria Shriver, they divorced after it came to light that he had had an extramarital child 14 years earlier, with a domestic worker. That son, Joseph Baena, is the one who today follows his father's passion for bodybuilding.
