Rise to Fame
Every studio note said the same: accent too thick, name impossible, body too extreme for film. He won Mr. Olympia six consecutive years (1970-75) and retired from bodybuilding before Hollywood caught up. Pumping Iron (1977) put enough personality on screen that producers stopped seeing him as a prop. Conan the Barbarian (1982) gave him a vehicle that could work around his limitations. The Terminator (1984) removed the limitations entirely. A role requiring almost no dialogue and a body that looked genuinely mechanical turned every objection into a qualification.
In the Spotlight
He left Hollywood to run California as governor from 2003 to 2011, turned down his $187,000 annual salary calling it 'petty cash,' and returned to acting just in time for a tabloid crisis. In 2011, he confirmed he'd fathered a child with the family housekeeper while still married to Maria Shriver, ending a 25-year marriage. The comeback has been more Netflix than multiplexes: FUBAR, a CIA action series, ran two seasons. James Cameron has since said he won't be in future Terminator films, which for a franchise built around his face is the bluntest possible verdict.
Side Notes
He was a real estate millionaire before he was a movie star, or so he has said. Using a $10,000 loan from his trainer alongside bodybuilding earnings, he started buying apartment buildings in Los Angeles in the early 1970s, eventually building a portfolio reportedly worth hundreds of millions. The part that gets overlooked: he served in the Austrian Army in 1965, operated an M47 Patton tank during mandatory service, and later paid $20,000 to ship that exact tank to the United States.