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Arnold Schwarzenegger is one of the most famous action stars in history, thanks to his role in movies like Conan the Barbarian and The Terminator. But the strange part about his story is that by the time he became a household name, he was already rich, and not because of Hollywood.
Schwarzenegger was born on July 30, 1947, in Thal, a small village near Graz, in Austria. He grew up in a modest home, and as a teenager he discovered bodybuilding, the sport that would take him around the world. At 20, he won his first Mr. Universe title.
In 1968, he moved to the U.S. with very little money and limited English. Over the following years, he became a legend of the sport, with five Mr. Universe and seven Mr. Olympia titles. But bodybuilding prizes were not enough to live on.
The business that made Schwarzenegger a millionaire before Hollywod
Together with his friend and fellow bodybuilder Franco Columbu, he started a bricklaying business in Los Angeles, and he saved the money he earned.
But the advice that changed everything for Schwarzenegger came in the 1970s, when a real estate agent named Olga gave him the tip that would make him rich. Schwarzenegger described her as a woman from Lebanon who was about “Danny DeVito’s height.”
Her advice was simple: instead of buying a house or a condo, he needed “income property,” a building that would pay for itself with rent. She found him a six-unit apartment building listed for $240,000. He put down only $27,500, and two years later he sold it for $400,000.
His success in real estate investments came before Hollywood
He kept buying. “Buildings that I would buy for $500,000 within the year were $800,000,” he told author Tim Ferriss in the book Tools of Titans. He went on to buy apartment and office buildings on Main Street in Santa Monica. “I became a millionaire from my real estate investments,” he said.
“I was a millionaire before I ever did Conan or Terminator,” he said at a business conference in 2023. His plan was intentional. He had seen actors who had no money and had to accept any role. “I did not rely on my movie career to make a living,” he told Ferriss.
That freedom paid off. “I was making money from real estate, and that gave me the power to wait for the roles I wanted,” he wrote in his newsletter. His big break came in 1982 with Conan the Barbarian.