Editorial: Arnold Schwarzenegger – a role model to young people everywhere and with a history in Northern Ireland

Arnold Schwarzenegger is an all American hero, yet in a fundamental respect he is not American.

​Arnie, the bodybuilder and actor and entrepreneur and politician, was in fact born in Austria. This means that he can never be United States president (the US constitution says that you must be a ‘natural born citizen’) even though opinion polls from the 1980s suggested he would win such a contest.

Few people know that Northern Ireland played an early part in Schwarzenegger’s rise to fame – he came here in 1966 as a teen for a bodybuilding contest that helped shape his career. Arnie recounted some of the story yesterday as he got an honorary degree from the University of Ulster, explaining how it was his first experience of public speaking.

In a tale that will be familiar to many accomplished speakers, Arnie said that first tentative attempt at speaking in public gave him more confidence for the next time, then the next – and now he can barely shut up!

It is fitting that students came out to hear Schwarzenegger yesterday – his explanation of how his confidence in speaking gradually grew will inspire young people who are shy. That he went on to prosper in so many different spheres, becoming hugely successful in films and then similarly so in politics, ultimately governor of the state of California – one of the biggest jobs in elected office, overseeing an economy larger than that of most countries – illustrates the rewards from relentless hard work.

He is good humoured too, evident yesterday as he graciously accepted his degree and spoke warmly about NI.

Arnie has previously spoken about the dangers of extremism, remarking on how he was born into a society years after it had embraced the Nazis. And he is an independent voice too, a stalwart of America’s Republican Party yet not afraid to criticise its most popular leader, President Donald Trump.