From a time-traveling death dealer in The Terminator to the impossibly pregnant papa-to-be in Junior, Arnold Schwarzenegger has portrayed some of the most extraordinary and implausible movie characters in recent memory.

Outrageous and unlikely as his silver screen scenarios seem, however, it is Schwarzenegger’s real-life climb to fame, fortune and icon status that stretches the limits of credibility. What odds would a Las Vegas bookie give on a muscle-bound and penniless Austrian arriving in America, breaking into movies and becoming the top box-office draw in American history?

Add that he also garners millions of dollars in real estate, marries a member of the nation’s most celebrated family and is elected governor of California and the odds fly off the chart. Yet the man known the world over as simply "Arnold" has achieved all this and more.

There is some truth to the frequent media depiction of Arnold as an egocentric and shameless self-promoter. He has conceded as much himself many times. But beyond all the media hype and bluster, Arnold’s phenomenal success represents the result of years of dedication to a single goal, and one unique individual’s unwillingness to settle for anything but the best.

Early years

Growing up in Thal, a small Alpine village near Graz, Arnold experienced a childhood typical for the place and time. While Austria struggled to rebuild after World War ii, Arnold and his older brother and parents eked out a living on father Gustav’s meager salary as a local policeman. Yet even as a child Arnold harbored greater dreams than the typical Austrian. He was unhappy with the anonymity of team sports and searched for ways to distinguish himself from the crowd.

"The worst thing I can be is like everybody else," he told Rolling Stone in 1985. "I hate that. That’s why I went into bodybuilding in the first place. It was the idea of taking the risk by yourself rather than with a whole team." Bodybuilding provided a young Arnold with the answer to his internal struggles; he dedicated himself with a superhuman passion and effort to the incipient sport, at that time little more than a curiosity to most. Eager to excel, Arnold surpassed the twice-weekly training regimen of others by working out daily. Instead of quitting in the early evening to return home for dinner he stayed in the gym until 10 every night. On Sundays when the gym was closed an undeterred Arnold would force open a window and pump iron in solitude.

Arnold understood, even as a teenager, the essential difference between wanting something to happen and making it so. Interweaving his ambitions of success with the workout process he practiced visualizing his goals while repeatedly pumping more and more weight. He came to embrace and even love the seemingly unpleasant practice of self-discipline.

"A lot of people do it in a conditional way," he told one interviewer. "Wouldn’t it be nice if that happened? That’s not enough. You have to put a big emotional commitment into it, that you want it very much, that you love the process and will take all the steps to achieve your goal."

Even at age 15 Arnold was visualizing himself onstage, winning the Mr. Universe contest. "I was driven by that thought," he once recalled to interviewer Nancy Collins. "It was a very spiritual thing in a way, because I had such faith in the route, the path, that it was never a question, in my mind, that I would make it."

By the time he turned 18 and had signed on for Austria’s compulsory military service Arnold was already preparing to take the next step to achieving his dreams. Barred from leaving the army base long enough to enter the Junior Mr. Europe bodybuilding competition in Stuttgart, Germany, Arnold chose to compete anyway, going awol in the process. Of course he won the title, the first of many international awards yet to come. The army brass were unimpressed, however, and sentenced Arnold to a week in jail with little food or warmth. Not that he cared. With this goal realized Arnold had refocused his sights – America loomed in the immediate future.

The New World

By the time Arnold arrived in the United States in 1968 at age 21 the Old World had become old hat. He had racked up the Mr. Europe, Best-Built Man of Europe and International Powerlifting Championship titles before becoming the youngest Mr. Universe in history, in 1967. With sponsorship from Muscle and Fitness magazine publisher Joe Weider, Arnold moved to Los Angeles, taking another step closer to the childhood dream of Hollywood success.

In addition to the lure of Hollywood, however, the United States also held the prospect of great fortune for the ambitious Schwarzenegger. Arnold had long appreciated the openness and encouragement of the entrepreneurial spirit associated with this side of the Atlantic. Having already co-opted many of the values of his adoptive home, Arnold dedicated himself to becoming a millionaire by the age of 30.

With some money saved up from his Weider stipend and the pay he received for playing the title role in the eminently forgettable low-budget picture Hercules Goes to New York, Arnold entered the real estate business with the purchase of a $10,000 apartment building. At the same time he and fellow strongman Franco Columbu were running a bricklaying firm doing jobs around Los Angeles. Although Arnold typically favored the negotiation side of the business, at times he would throw his significant weight into a project. For one job Columbu says they undercut by $3,000 a competitor’s $4,000 bid to tear down a chimney. By lying on the roof and forcing the chimney down with their powerful legs they completed the job in 10 minutes. The grateful client even let Arnold keep the bricks, which the budding business magnate immediately turned around and resold as antiques.

Moving into movies

With the benefit of hindsight it’s nearly impossible to imagine today’s blockbuster action flicks without the industry’s No. 1 chiseled Austrian poster boy. In the mid-1970s the story was a little different, however. Despite the Hercules film and a bit part in Robert Altman’s The Long Goodbye, the offers did not flood in. At the time the name and accent that have become legendary caused agents to wince. Few athletes had ever made it big in Hollywood, they explained to him, and most definitely no one from central Europe who looked like a genetic experiment run amok.

This repeated rejection and disparagement would have probably sent the average Hollywood aspirant home on the next Greyhound bus. But Arnold is a different breed. Undiscouraged, in 1975 he instead chose to retire from bodybuilding – the sport that had helped him accomplish all his goals to date – and focus his full attention on building a successful acting career.

"I stopped bodybuilding internationally," he once told USA Today, "to create the hunger for acting. That created the need to get attention somewhere else. I love it when the camera is on."

This hunger led first to a role on a Lucille Ball TV special, a spot on The Dating Game and then to the lead in Staying Hungry, a major motion picture also starring Jeff Bridges and Sally Field about a European bodybuilder in the U.S. (talk about typecasting!) with money and girl troubles galore. In preparation for the role Arnold studied with a top acting instructor for three months, digging into his soul to find the right emotion and motivation for each scene. Not only did the part provide Arnold with an important stepping stone to better parts, he also won his first, and so far only, acting award, a Golden Globe for Most Promising Newcomer. He also began to understand some of the key internal struggles he would face in making the transition from the weight room to the studio lot.

"Acting was an enormous challenge for me," he once remarked. "In physical competition I’d had to learn to keep my emotions under control. You almost have to build a wall around yourself, guard against your own feelings and the feelings of those around you, too, because lows or highs, coming at the wrong times, can negatively influence how you perform. I trained that way for a long time. In acting it’s exactly the opposite. You have to be sensitive to yourself and to those you’re working with. Stay open. Keep your defenses down."

No matter how much Arnold studied Stanislavsky or practiced finding his "center," however, early directors were much more interested in the astonishing Schwarzenegger bulk than his mastery of Thespis’s art. In the critically acclaimed semi-documentary Pumping Iron and his breakthrough blockbuster title role in Conan The Barbarian Arnold flaunted all his sinews, flexing, posing and pumping his way through hours of screen time. In preparation for Conan, Arnold had just three months to work back into peak bulk condition. For motivational purposes he broke his retirement from competition and entered the 1980 Mr. Olympia contest. By winning the competition – his seventh Mr. Olympia title, to rest on the mantel alongside five Mr. Universe trophies – Arnold became the winningest bodybuilder in history.

Just as he had used his success in bodybuilding to make the jump into motion pictures, Arnold was equally calculating in plotting out the development of his film career. Despite Conan’s financial success – it was the first of many Schwarzenegger vehicles to break the $100 million mark – Arnold hoped to move away from the glistening oiled-up vein-popping characters and into roles with more staying power. By the early ’80s he was refusing reporter and paparazzi requests that he flex for the interviewers’ and readers’ amusement.

"When pictures go out now I’m usually in a suit," he told Moviegoer in 1982. "It will take a lot of time to convince the public that I am an actor. I have to prove myself."

A star is born

Arnold’s final step to the top of the Hollywood heap came in 1984 with the release of The Terminator. The role of a conscienceless half-man, half-machine sent from the future to stalk his human prey could not have been more perfect for Schwarzenegger. He spent three months training to create the character audiences saw on screen, working out with all sorts of weaponry, armaments and explosives. Not only did the Terminator need to demonstrate a facility with firearms, he also had to remain unfazed by a constant barrage of gunfire or explosions.

The Terminator made Arnold a full-fledged star, and ushered in what film historians may one day refer to as the Schwarzenegger era. Despite the often scathing criticism from film critics and antiviolence crusaders, the icon was here to stay. Arnold’s 1980s films, including Commando, Raw Deal and Predator, grossed more than $1 billion worldwide.

The unique Schwarzenegger appeal was aptly summed up by director James Cameron, who worked with Arnold for both The Terminator and its sequel, Terminator 2: Judgment Day. "Arnold has great presence, timing and self-knowledge," Cameron told Newsday’s David Friedman. "For a lot of actors, acting is a very convoluted process. They don’t know how to get from here to there, because they don’t know where ‘there’ is. Arnold does. He’s very intuitive, There’s obviously a great synergy at work there – an amazing combination of physicality, warmth, menace, humor and intelligence."

By 1988 Arnold felt secure enough in his niche as action hero to step out and try something new. While his action films were rife with "buttons" – those lightning-fast quips used to punctuate scenes – Arnold was ready to move beyond throwing a knife into a villain and commenting, "Stick around." He wanted to do comedy. In Twins he found the perfect vehicle, and in co-star Danny DeVito his ideal foil.

Portraying fraternal twins separated at birth Arnold and DeVito bumble their way through a variety of misadventures as they attempt to locate their long-lost mother. For the first time Arnold showed that he could poke fun at his own larger-than-life Hollywood persona, not to mention his size. And audiences laughed along too – to the tune of $120 million in box office sales in the U.S. For this role alone Arnold commanded a cool $25 million. Following Twins Arnold would again score comedy hits with Kindergarten Cop and, back for more hijinks with DeVito, in 1995’s Junior.

Whether appearing in special effects extravaganzas or high concept comedies, however, Arnold adds one common factor to all his movies: He always steps in personally to sell them to the public. Unlike many stars, who view publicity as a tedious chore, Arnold tirelessly pitches his films. This salesmanship reflects one fundamental aspect of Arnold’s personality: He genuinely enjoys people.

"To me fame is not a burden," he once told The New York Times Magazine. "Some people in my position are always hiding, putting on sunglasses and weird clothes to be incognito. When people stare at me, it’s not something that bothers me."

In 1982 he revealed that as a test he would stop 10 strangers as they walked down a New York City thoroughfare, asking whether they knew him and if so from where. Some recognized their musclebound assailant from bodybuilding, others from film or his books. "It’s not accurate information," he once commented about the unusual polling practice, "but somehow I always know where I’m at."

New challenges

From his early days as an ambitious young bodybuilder in Austria to his transition from action star to comedy film roles Arnold has carefully orchestrated each career step and increased his marketability apace. As he unequivocally stated in Education of a Bodybuilder, "The meaning of life is not simply to exist, to survive, but to move ahead, to go ahead, to achieve, to conquer." In a 1993 poll Arnold placed second only to Oprah Winfrey as the person Americans would most want to sit next to on a long-distance flight.

Along with the acclaim and successes, however, there have been significant failures as well. In 1994, coming off the heels of Terminator 2’s megasuccess Arnold took another unexpected twist in his career, starring in Last Action Hero, a complex, tongue-in-cheek postmodern film-within-a-film that fizzled at theaters. The studio claimed the film would eventually break even, but internal corporate memos put the movie’s unrecouped balance at $124 million, making it the greatest flop in film history. The vultures began to circle around Arnold, calling him washed up, and claiming that his ego had finally outgrown his biceps.

Yet amid the swirl of criticism, fingerpointing and Hollywood backstabbing Arnold remained surprisingly upbeat. Understanding better than most the importance of a positive attitude, especially in such a public business, Arnold never let the criticism or box office numbers break his air of self-confidence. This may explain why he was able to bounce back so successfully in 1994’s True Lies. On top again with back-to-back hits in Junior and this past year’s Eraser, Arnold has successfully moved beyond even the Last Action Hero debacle and once again assumed his rightful mantle as the world’s biggest movie star.

What if

Whether authoring a bestseller, heading up the President’s Council on Physical Fitness or helping to make Planet Hollywood the place to be in cities all over the globe, Arnold has always sought new opportunities and challenges.

Like many successful actors Arnold has also taken a turn behind the cameras, first directing an episode of HBO’s Tales From The Crypt and then following up with the TV movie Christmas in Connecticut. So adding to his directing credits remains a distinct possibility. And then there’s politics. As perhaps the Republican party’s most popular and high-profile celebrity backer Arnold has admitted to no small political ambitions. "The joy in public office is a tremendous idea," he once told Entertainment Weekly. "I think it could be the greatest challenge yet."

But if elected office is in his future Arnold has made it clear that unlike fellow actor Clint Eastwood he wouldn’t settle for anything so picayune as small town mayor.

"I don’t think I’m the type who could go for such a small city," he remarked to GQ in 1986. "Like Santa Monica. I mean, if I were going to run, I’d go after something major – like the governor of California." Coming from a man who was drawn to the United States for the big cars, wide open spaces and bountiful opportunity, such ambitious talk should surprise no one.

Whichever path Arnold chooses , however, there is little doubt that he will attack any new endeavor with the same zeal, determination and resolute self-confidence that has made him the unlikeliest success story of a generation. But if you ask him, just remember to stay focused on the future – he’s not interested in talking about the past anyway.

"I never start evaluating how did I do this," he once explained. "For me, it’s a total waste of time. Totally. I don’t want to analyze yesterday. Tomorrow, period. Because that’s what counts."