How tall is Arnold Schwarzenegger?

Arnold Schwarzenegger's height: the 6′2″ listing

Arnold Schwarzenegger is 188 cm, or 6′2″, the height listed throughout his competitive bodybuilding career and the figure the site uses. It appears alongside his famous competition statistics, a contest weight of about 235 lb (107 kg), a chest of 57 inches and arms of 22 inches, in the record of a man who won the Mr. Olympia title seven times and then became the biggest action star in the world.

Bodybuilders' heights are usually more reliable than those of actors, because physique competitions sometimes divide entrants into height classes and judges see competitors barefoot on the same stage. Schwarzenegger competed against men whose heights were similarly documented, and photographs of him on stage with rivals of known height are consistent with 6′2″.

The weight figures span about 11 kg because bodybuilders deliberately cycle their weight, bulking in the off-season and cutting fat before a contest. The 113 kg figure in some databases falls between the two and probably reflects a mid-season listing.

From Thal to Mr. Universe

Arnold Alois Schwarzenegger was born on July 30, 1947, in Thal, a village near Graz in the Austrian state of Styria. His father, Gustav, was the local police chief. Arnold took up weight training as a teenager and became obsessed with building a champion's physique.

He served his compulsory year in the Austrian Army in 1965, famously leaving his post without permission to compete in a junior bodybuilding contest, which he won. In 1967, at 20, he became the youngest man ever to win the Mr. Universe title in London. He won that title three more times and moved to the United States in 1968 to compete against the best bodybuilders in the world.

Bodybuilding record

His 1980 comeback was controversial, because he entered at short notice after years away from competition and won against a field that included several men who believed they had better physiques. His record of seven Olympia titles stood until Lee Haney won his eighth in 1991.

How height shapes a bodybuilder

Height plays a complicated role in bodybuilding. Judges assess muscle size, symmetry, proportion and conditioning, and taller and shorter competitors each have advantages.

• Shorter bodybuilders can look denser and fuller, because muscle mass is packed onto a smaller frame. Many champions, including Franco Columbu, Schwarzenegger's training partner, were well under six feet.
• Taller bodybuilders need more total muscle to look equally full, but when they achieve it they create an imposing presence that dominates a lineup.

At 6′2″ and 235 lb in contest condition, Schwarzenegger was unusually large for his era, and his height gave him a long, flowing line that set him apart on stage. His chest and arm measurements would be enormous on any frame; on his, they looked balanced. Many judges and historians regard his combination of size and proportion as the template for the modern heavyweight physique.

Pumping Iron and Lou Ferrigno

The rivalry that introduced Schwarzenegger to mainstream audiences was with Lou Ferrigno, documented in the 1977 film Pumping Iron. Ferrigno, listed at 6′5″ (196 cm) and well over 270 lb in competition, was larger than Schwarzenegger in every dimension. He finished second at the 1974 Mr. Olympia and third in 1975, behind Schwarzenegger both times.

The film portrayed Schwarzenegger as a confident, psychologically dominant champion and Ferrigno as a younger, quieter challenger. It showed audiences that in bodybuilding, sheer size does not guarantee a win: Schwarzenegger's proportion and stage presence beat Ferrigno's greater mass.

Height then played a role in both men's acting careers. When CBS cast its Incredible Hulk series in 1977, Schwarzenegger was considered for the title role but passed over, reportedly because he was not tall enough. Ferrigno, 8 cm taller, got the part and played the Hulk until 1981. Schwarzenegger's breakthrough came instead with Conan the Barbarian in 1982.

From Conan to Terminator: an unusually large leading man

Schwarzenegger's size defined his early film career. Hollywood had rarely built films around a bodybuilder, and his physique, accent and unusual name were all considered obstacles. Instead, they became trademarks.

In The Terminator, his height and mass made the cyborg assassin believable as an unstoppable machine. In Predator, he led a squad of unusually large actors, including Carl Weathers and Jesse Ventura. Directors framed him to emphasize scale, often shooting from below and placing him beside smaller co-stars or child actors, as in Kindergarten Cop.

Casting the Terminator

The role that made him a global star was not the one he was first offered. When Orion Pictures sent Schwarzenegger the script for The Terminator, the studio had him in mind for Kyle Reese, the human soldier sent back in time. James Cameron worried that the casting was wrong and, after meeting him, concluded that Schwarzenegger would make a far better Terminator. Other names had been floated for the machine, including Sylvester Stallone and Mel Gibson, who turned it down, and O.J. Simpson, whom Cameron rejected.

Cameron later acknowledged the logical problem: an infiltration robot built to blend in among humans would hardly pass unnoticed if it looked like a 6′2″ champion bodybuilder. He argued that on screen, what feels right matters more than strict plausibility. The film, made for $6.4 million, grossed $78.3 million worldwide, and the image of Schwarzenegger's towering, expressionless cyborg became one of the most recognizable in cinema. Michael Biehn took the role of Reese.

The Twins effect: Arnold and Danny DeVito

The most famous height comparison in Schwarzenegger's career is the comedy Twins (1988), directed by Ivan Reitman. He and Danny DeVito play twin brothers produced by a secret genetic experiment and separated at birth: Julius is huge, optimistic and naive, while Vincent is short, balding and cynical. The premise is a visual joke, and it worked: the film opened at No. 1 in the US and grossed $216 million worldwide against an $18 million budget.

On the site's data, the gap is about 41 cm (16 inches), with DeVito at 147 cm and Schwarzenegger at 188 cm. The two reunited for Junior in 1994. A sequel, Triplets, was announced in 2012 and redeveloped several times, but after Reitman's death in 2022, Schwarzenegger said in 2023 that it would not go ahead.

Arnold beside his co-stars

The table uses heights from the site's database.

Sylvester Stallone, his chief rival for the title of the 1980s' top action star, is about 11 cm shorter. The two later worked together in the Expendables films and Escape Plan (2013). Carl Weathers, who played Dillon in Predator, is the same height, and their famous handshake scene in that film pairs two men of identical size.

To see these pairings in proportion, use the 3D height comparison tool or measure the gap with the height difference calculator.

Arnold versus today's action stars

Schwarzenegger set the template for the physically imposing action hero, and his successors are a useful measure of how that template has changed. The heights below are from the site's data.

Dwayne Johnson, often described as Schwarzenegger's natural heir, is about 8 cm taller and, like Arnold, came to film from a sport built on physical spectacle. Jason Momoa matches Johnson's height. Hugh Jackman, who played Wolverine for 17 years, is slightly taller than Schwarzenegger but played a character canonically described as short. At the other end, Tom Cruise, the most bankable action star of the past three decades, is 18 cm shorter, proof that the genre no longer requires a bodybuilder's frame.

The difference is in build more than height. Several of today's stars are as tall as or taller than Schwarzenegger, but none competed at his level of muscularity. At his peak, his combination of 188 cm and 107 kg of contest-lean muscle remained in a class of its own.

Compared with Austrian and American men

Schwarzenegger was born in Austria and became a US citizen in 1983, so both countries' averages are relevant. The site's Austria data, from NCD-RisC's pooled analysis of measured surveys, shows how much taller he was than men of his generation:

For men born in 1947, the estimate falls between the 1926 and 1956 cohorts, at roughly 174 to 175 cm. Schwarzenegger, at 188 cm, was about 13 to 14 cm taller than the typical Austrian man of his generation, and in a postwar era of limited food, his size would have been even more striking among his peers.

In the United States, the CDC's 2015–2018 NHANES survey found a median height of 175.4 cm for men aged 20 and over and a 95th percentile of 187.4 cm. Schwarzenegger's 188 cm is right at that 95th percentile, so roughly one American man in 20 is as tall as he is. The United States data page shows that American men born in the 1940s and 1950s averaged about 176 to 177 cm.

Governor and later career

Schwarzenegger served as the 38th Governor of California from November 2003 to January 2011, winning office in a recall election. Political cartoonists and commentators often played on his physical image, and his nickname "the Governator" combined his job with his most famous role.

He returned to acting after leaving office and later starred in the Netflix series FUBAR. He also remains involved in fitness through the Arnold Sports Festival, the annual multi-sport event in Columbus, Ohio, that is considered the most prestigious bodybuilding competition after Mr. Olympia.

Summary

Arnold Schwarzenegger stands 6′2″ (188 cm), a height that helped make him the most famous bodybuilder in history and an action star whose size defined his roles. He was taller than most bodybuilding champions but shorter than his Pumping Iron rival Lou Ferrigno, who took the Hulk role partly because of the 8 cm difference. On screen, the 41 cm gap with Danny DeVito in Twins produced one of the most memorable height contrasts in film. Decades later, his height and physique remain the reference point against which every muscular leading man is measured. For more actors and athletes, see the celebrity height directory.