Every journey starts with one small step … into a JacuzziĪrnie doesn’t deny that change is hard. Well … in 2003 he certainly conquered California, at least, with 48.6% of the vote. That’s right: growing up in austere circumstances in rural Graz (his father made him do 200 knee-bends every morning to “earn” his breakfast, and was also physically abusive), Arnie’s goal was to conquer not just a continent, but what he regarded as “the No 1 country in the world, as the world’s greatest democracy”. His vision to make movies “was big and broad, like it was for Tiger (golf), Venus and Serena (tennis) and me (America)”. No, bigger than thatĪll that stuff about starting small, with realistic goals? Arnie laughs in the face of your puny dreams! He points out that Steven Spielberg didn’t think small. Still, there is plenty in it for anyone keen to match his $450m estimated net worth or enormous biceps. What it does not include, beyond a passing reference to “rock bottom” and an allusion to hurting his family, is his 1996 infidelity when married to Maria Shriver fathering a love child with his housekeeper and the more recent allegations of his groping several women, that he apologised for earlier this year. Twelve years since leaving office, Schwarzenegger has just published his seventh book, Be Useful, sharing his “seven tools for life” and lessons learned in each of his various incarnations. Ever since his first trip to the US from Graz, Austria, in 1966, the Terminator has taken on a remarkable number of guises: bodybuilder, action hero, villain and even – in a move that seemed ludicrous in 2003, but in fact foretold decades of politics to come – the elected governor of California.Īrnie’s latest step-change is something more predictable: a “self-help guy”, as he puts it. He told us that he’d be back – but, after nearly 60 years in the public eye, Arnold Schwarzenegger has never gone away.

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