The action icon has broken into acting, then stardom, then comedy, then politics, and back again.
Arnold Schwarzenegger and Abigail Breslin in Maggie.
Roadside Attractions
Forty-five years into his acting career, Arnold Schwarzenegger is showing us a new side of himself with Maggie, his new indie film opening in limited release on May 8. The action icon and former politician makes a go at being a serious leading man in what is, zombie apocalypse setting aside, actually an emotional drama about a father and his dying child. Schwarzenegger plays Wade Vogel, a Midwestern man living in a near future in which the “necroambulist virus” has civilization on the brink of collapse. When Wade's teenage daughter Maggie (Abigail Breslin) gets bitten, he brings her home after making a promise he has no intention of keeping — that when she starts hungering for human flesh, he'll put her in quarantine.
What's refreshing about this choice isn't that Schwarzenegger wanted to do the role — the Austrian actor is no chameleon, but he's been consistent about pushing himself on screen. It's that it works so well. The larger-than-life star, who's soon to be reprising one of his most famous roles in Terminator Genisys, is still formidable as hell at 67, but he looks and feels more human-scaled. Wade is a man used to and still very capable of fighting his own battles, but there's nothing he can do for his daughter as she slowly transforms into something that could be dangerous to him and to those around them. “The story was interesting to me because it gave me a chance to play a more vulnerable character rather than a 'throw the grenade and blow everybody up' type of thing,” Schwarzenegger said when BuzzFeed News spoke to the once Governator about other times in his screen career when he tried to show us something new.
Hercules in New York (1969): When Schwarzenegger made his movie debut
Trimark Home Video
Schwarzenegger was in his early twenties and fresh off a few Mr. Universe wins when he made his big-screen debut as “Arnold Strong” in this goofy low-budget fantasy in which he played a bored son of Zeus looking for fun in the Big Apple. “My dream was to come to America and to build my bodybuilding career,” the actor said. “Then, when I'm finished, to get into movies.” That second part came together much faster than he'd planned or expected when six months after coming to the U.S., muscle mag publisher Joe Weider called to tell him, “They're looking for a star in a Hercules movie. I recommended that you were the best.'” Schwarzenegger laughingly recalled that Weider sold him as a “'German Shakespearean actor' — there's no such thing!”
His first leading man gig arrived about five years before Schwarzenegger felt he'd be ready for film, but he found the chance to take on a role he'd seen childhood idols Steve Reeves and Reg Park play irresistible. When it came to making the movie, though, he doesn't remember it as an ideal experience: “I couldn't even understand the script — my English wasn't good enough at that point. I remember I took English classes to get up to speed very quickly, and acting classes with this acting coach in New York.” He admitted that he was “thrown in there and I really was not prepared at all for that,” but in the end, “I was happy that I did it.” Hercules in New York was recently added to Netflix's streaming service.
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