The biography of the Austrian-American actor and its richness tempts to search, investigate and seek to find out the details of his childhood and early upbringing, and the beginnings of dreams that formed in his village of Tal in the Austrian countryside, where he was born in 1947 and the stations that he later took to become a famous figure on more than one level.

 

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edited by |Jus Mcmahon

 

Hollywood   section -  CJ journalist

 

Hollywood – July,2,2023

 

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But this stardom achieved by Arnold did not come on a “plate of gold”, as they say, he grew up in a poor rural environment that did not pay much attention to the deep yearning of Arnold for salvation, and he had to have a lot of patience, will and determination to achieve what he wanted, which is evidenced by the limited documentary series “Arnold”, which came in three episodes, about an hour each, directed by Leslie Chilcott, which began to be shown on the Netflix platform.

The remarkable thing about the biography of this “self-made Dreamer”, according to the vision of the series, is that he was able to combine several professions or specialties with almost nothing in common, except a hidden appeal that pushes him forward, so he excelled in each of them separately, as he was keen to give each specialty its right of attention, and to devote himself to it completely, and once he reaches his goal in it, he turns to another specialty, with the same rush and enthusiasm.

Arnold began his life as an athlete, specifically bodybuilding, for which, in the Seventies, he won several World Awards, and when he achieved what he wanted from fame and excellence in this sports field, he went to the cinema, employing his huge physique, and here his stardom shone, and his films topped the box office in the Eighties era, especially, when the success of the majority of films, in a commercial marketing sense, depended on the size of the muscles of the action heroes, and their ability to perform complex and piercing action scenes, without much need for acting skills taught at academies.

Cinema was, apparently, an incentive to break into another field, the seventh art secured him a wide audience, and this audience is the main code that authorized him to assume the post of Governor of the state of California, from the Republican Party, without any closure on the ideology of this party, and here he also achieved achievements, most notably the issue of attention to the environment and climate change, and the launch of huge urban projects, aimed at serving the country, which provided him with precious opportunities, as he admits, independent of the political and partisan calculations mastered by politicians, usually.

Because there was some connection between bodybuilding and starring in motion pictures, as is the case with a number of bodybuilders who moved from the sports arenas to the screen space, but politics seemed alienating in the biography of Arnold, who had no interest in this aspect, and he admits this, commenting on his first day as governor of California: I felt lost.. What am I going to do in this office He wondered how things are going in a position that is completely ignorant of its requirements, perhaps this ignorance of what the position requires, is exactly what allowed him to be diligent, working on unfamiliar projects.

Politician Willie Brown comments on this point, explaining that” one of the blessings that Arnold Blessed was his ignorance of the way others managed the post, so he did it the way he had to do without political consequences, “and one of his unusual actions, for example, was that he set up a” smoking tent " in the garden of the government department where he was staying, which soon turned into a kind of forum where state affairs are deliberated with all comfort and spontaneity, away from the routine and bureaucracy of official offices.

These three fields, sports, cinema and politics are the main themes addressed by the series “Arnold”, as in each episode we listen to a side of Schwarzenegger's biography, narrated by himself while holding a Cuban cigar, in the salon of his house, or in a swimming pool in the middle of a snow-covered forest that recalls his native Austria, as well as testimonies of actors, directors, politicians and bodybuilding coaches, to finally complete the picture of a unique personality in pursuit of success and excellence, he aspired early on to “achieve the impossible”, as he says.

Arnold's father was a local police official in the Austrian region of Graz, and he had returned as a broken soldier after the defeat of the Nazis, in whose ranks he served. He was cruel to his two sons Arnold and his older brother, as well as to his mother, he was trying to apply the strict military regime that he learned in the barracks at home, and it seems that this cruelty was an incentive for the boy Arnold to escape from his local environment in pursuit of his dream, while his older brother “fragile” succumbed to his miserable reality and later died in a road accident under the influence of alcohol.

Arnold borrows here a saying attributed to the German philosopher Nietzsche that: “the blow that does not kill you makes you stronger,” referring to his father's bad treatment of him, which made him strong and cohesive in the face of the many difficulties and obstacles that intercepted his life full of many dramatic elements, manifested in this series full of a lot of archival materials that illustrate the features of a personality hungry to realize dreams he had planned since childhood, amid a frustrating atmosphere.

Arnold married in 1986from Maria Shriver, a journalist and niece of US President John F. Kennedy, who, as is known, was assassinated at the turn of the sixties of the last century.

The marriage produced four children, and his entry into politics had nothing to do with his marriage to a girl belonging to the Kennedy political family, on the contrary, his wife was opposed to this option until he finally succeeded in convincing her.

Despite this bright professional record, the successes he achieved, and the wealth he was able to accumulate, but his life was also not without some failures or mistakes, which Arnold admits, and perhaps the most painful incident in his career was the relationship that linked him with the family housekeeper, from whom he had a child, but the matter remained secret for more than ten years until doubts about the subject to confess to his wife the bitter truth that caused their separation after a quarter of a century of marriage.

This separation caused him to lose that atmosphere and intimate family moments, and now he lives alone, as the series shows, amid a group of pets that he takes care of, and shares the air of life with, amid a flood of memories tells the story of a man who came out of the sidelines to occupy the front rows, with purely individual efforts, as the name of the series indicates, which is limited to his first name “Arnold” without the surname, referring to his self-made that manifested in every experience he had during his busy career.

 

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