Spartan Daily - Serving San Jose State University since 1934

The award was presented to Schwarzenegger for his "maverick" achievements in all three of his careers - bodybuilding, acting and politics.

Speaking in a half-full Morris Dailey Auditorium, the governor told the crowd of independent movie fans about how he succeeded in the early days of each of his careers.

"You have to try everything," he said. "You can't be cautious. The only way you will know how far you can go with anything is to go for it."

Schwarzenegger told the audience that he got into bodybuilding after watching Hercules movies in his native Austria.

"Friends in Austria said 'No, no, don't even try. Bodybuilding is an American sport.' But I ignored them and worked out and became a bodybuilder and went on to be Mr. Olympia seven times," he said.

From there, it was a move to America followed by attempts to get into movies.

"I realized I accomplished everything I could in bodybuilding, and then I worked just as hard to get into acting," he said. "Hard to believe, I even took accent lessons."

He said studios told him to forget it. By the 1970s, actors were not the Hercules type. By then, Hercules movies were out of favor and body types like Dustin Hoffman, Al Pacino and Warren Beatty were what the studios wanted.

"You have a body that is old-fashioned, an accent nobody can understand and a name nobody can pronounce," Schwarzenegger said he was told by producers.

But once again, he said he wasn't going to let people convince him he couldn't achieve his vision, and he went on to success in the "Conan the Barbarian" movies.

From there, he moved from the action genre to more character pieces, and he says it was "The Terminator," despite giving him only 27 lines in the movie, that led to meatier roles.

Schwarzenegger said he was worried about the villain role.

"Hollywood has this thing that once you play a villain, you always play a villain. They grow to like you as a villain," he said. "It was (director) James Cameron who convinced me that I could make this part into something more than the typical villain."

Schwarzenegger said he was worried when police came up to him after the movie was released.

"I was worried because in the movie I blow away a police station full of police," he said. "But they came up to me after and said how much they loved 'The Terminator.' They said they especially loved when the police station got blown up. That's when I realized the part was going to be more than the typical Hollywood bad guy."

Schwarzenegger said that his movie career went way beyond his dreams. He was just as surprised as anyone when his movie career veered off into comedic roles.

"Ivan Reitman (director of 'Twins') told me there is this whole other side of me that nobody ever sees," he said. Schwarzenegger said Reitman gave him a choice of four different scripts, and "Twins" with Danny DeVito became his first comedy hit.

"Nobody took a salary for 'Twins.' We all loaded by on the back end (only getting paid if the movie made a profit), but I ended up making more money on that movie than any other movie I ever made."

He said people were always looking for messages in his movies. Now that he is in politics, he said many "talking heads" are going through his movies looking for some sort of special message to apply to his politics.

"All I wanted to do was entertain," he said. "How can I entertain people in America? How can I entertain people in Austria? That's what I care about. If there is a message, fine. If not, that is fine, also."

Schwarzenegger touched a little on his most recent career in politics. He said prior to his appearance on the "The Tonight Show with Jay Leno" when he announced he was going to run for governor, he had some doubts.

"By the time I sat down in the chair, I had a clear vision of myself as governor," he said. "I had spent two weeks prior to then talking to my wife, talking to my family and talking to friends. But by the time I was on the show, I had the vision and I just went with it."

Schwarzenegger often displayed his self-effacing humor, which has gone a long way during his numerous careers.

He made fun of his original goals.

"My goal was just to be in Hercules movies. I went well beyond my original goals," he said.

When asked about some of his movies, he said "If a legislator and I don't agree, I tell him he must watch 'Red Sonja' 15 times," referring to a movie from early in his career.

Greeted by a standing ovation when he first appeared, he said, "You must all be Republicans."

He even mentioned his new friendship and role reversal with the governor he replaced in the recall election.

"Maria (Shriver) and I recently had dinner with Gray Davis and his wife, Sharon, and I wanted to ask him all sorts of questions about politics," he said. "But all he wanted to do was talk about acting. Davis is trying to get into acting and that's all he wanted, was tips on acting from me."