I'll be back!

From bodybuilder to blockbuster action star to comedy king to politician, we look at the remarkable life of a young Austrian boy who has courageously followed his every dream. Arnold Schwarzenegger was born in July 1947. He was raised in a strict catholic household by his parents, who instilled in him a strong sense of ambition. From a young age Arnie wanted to be a body builder and started to train and lift weights at 15. His ambition was to become the greatest body builder of all time. He was even known to break into the gym and train until he would collapse from total exhaustion. His dream was finally realised when, at the age of 18, he went AWOL from the Austrian army to take part in the body building competition which was to earn him the title Mr Europa Junior. This little move also earned him a short stint in prison. Two years, and much muscle pumping later, Arnie became the youngest ever Mr Universe. Arnie studied marketing at the University of Munich for two years before leaving for America, at the invitation of muscle entrepreneur, Joe Weider, to study Business and Economics. Arnie's body building success continued as he picked up the title of Mr. Olympia seven times and Mr Universe five times. His first attempts at a movie career were under the guise of Arnold Black, starring in low-budget movies such as 'Hercules in New York' in 1969. His first big break came in the comedy 'Stay Hungry' in 1976 for which he won a Golden Globe for Best Acting Debut in a Motion Picture, leading to further successes in cult-films such as the 'Conan' series and the 'Terminator' series. In 1982, he played a role ideal for him - a warrior in 'Conan The Barbarian' – which became a smash hit all over the globe. This was followed by the slightly less successful 'Conan The Destroyer' in 1984. 'Conan' kick-started his career but his next role catapulted him into stardom. He played the villain in 'Terminator' in 1984, which became a worldwide success and led to Arnie's catchphrase 'I'll be back'. He then appeared in 'Commando' (1985), 'Raw Deal' (1986), 'Predator' (1987), 'The Running Man' (1987) and 'Red Heat' (1988), which were all box office smashes. Arnie then tried his hand at comedy starring in the 1988 film 'Twins' alongside Danny DeVito. In 1990, he cemented his acting career with the successful 'Total Recall' and 'Kindergarten Cop', which was another light-hearted role. He then returned to the Terminator, starring in the sequel 'Terminator 2: Judgement Day', which had a larger budget than the previous film, in 1991. This was arguably the highlight of his career. His 1993 film 'Last Action Hero' ended up being a flop in comparison but his 'I'll be back' phrase came true in 1994 when he starred in the surprise hit of the year 'True Lies'. Arnie then focused on family-friendly entertainment in the form of 'Junior' (1994) and 'Jingle All The Way' (1996) before playing darker roles in 'Eraser' (1996), 'Batman & Robin' (1997) and 'End of Days' (1999). This was followed by 'Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines' (2003), which was the weakest in the franchise, 'Welcome To The Jungle' (2003), 'Around The World in 80 Days' (2004) and 'The Kid and I' in 2005. Arnie has whole-heartedly embraced the American way, loving the country from the moment he arrived, believing that the US has a much more positive outlook on life and aspirations than his home country. So much so that Arnie became a naturalised citizen in 1983. Arnie has previously held positions within the American Government as chairman of the President's Council on Physical Fitness and Sports in 1990 and the weight lifting trainer for the Special Olympics weight training team. More recently Arnie ran in the California elections for Governor and won, becoming the 38th Governor of California in 2003, taking a break from acting. He returned to film in 2010 in an uncredited role in 'The Expendables', and will appear in 'The Expendables 2' this year, followed by 'The Last Stand', 'Unknown Soldier' and 'The Swan' in 2013. He married Maria Shriver in 1986 and they have four children together. They are currently undertaking divorce proceedings after the revelation that Schwarzenegger had a love child with another woman.

Queen Of Talk

Born to an unwed teenage mother, Oprah Winfrey spent her first years on her grandmother's farm in Kosciusko, Mississippi, while her mother looked for work in the North. Life on the farm was primitive, but her grandmother taught her to read at an early age, and at age three Oprah was reciting poems and Bible verses in local churches. Despite the hardships of her physical environment, she enjoyed the loving support of her grandmother and the church community, who cherished her as a gifted child. Her world changed for the worse at age six, when she was sent to Milwaukee to live with her mother, who had found work as a housemaid. In the long days when her mother was absent from their inner city apartment, young Oprah was repeatedly molested by male relatives and another visitor. The abuse, which lasted from the ages of nine to 13, was emotionally devastating. When she tried to run away, she was sent to a juvenile detention home, only to be denied admission because all the beds were filled. At 14, she was out of the house and on her own. By her own account, she was sexually promiscuous as a teenager. After giving birth to a baby boy who died in infancy, she went to Nashville, Tennessee to live with her father. Vernon Winfrey was a strict disciplinarian, but he gave his daughter the secure home life she needed. He saw to it that she met a curfew, and he required her to read a book and write a book report each week. "As strict as he was," says Oprah, "he had some concerns about me making the best of my life, and would not accept anything less than what he thought was my best." In this structured environment, Oprah flourished, and became an honor student, winning prizes for oratory and dramatic recitation. At age 17, Oprah Winfrey won the Miss Black Tennessee beauty pageant and was offered an on-air job at WVOL, a radio station serving the African American community in Nashville. She also won a full scholarship to Tennessee State University, where she majored in Speech Communications and Performing Arts. Oprah continued to work at WVOL in her first years of college, but her broadcasting career was already taking off. She left school and signed on with a local television station as a reporter and anchor. In 1976, she moved to Baltimore to join WJZ-TV News as a co-anchor. There, she co-hosted her first talk show, People Are Talking, while continuing to serve as anchor and news reporter. She had found a niche that perfectly suited her outgoing, empathetic personality, and word soon spread to other cities. In January 1984, she was invited to Chicago to host a faltering half-hour morning program on WLS-TV. In less than a year, she turned AM Chicago into the hottest show in town. The format was soon expanded to an hour, and in September 1985 it was renamed The Oprah Winfrey Show. A year later, The Oprah Winfrey Show was broadcast nationally, and quickly became the number one talk show in national syndication. In 1987, its first year of eligibility, the show received three Daytime Emmy Awards in the categories of Outstanding Host, Outstanding Talk/Service Program and Outstanding Direction. The following year, the show received its second consecutive Emmy as Outstanding Talk/Service Program, and Oprah herself received the International Radio and Television Society's "Broadcaster of the Year" Award. She was the youngest person ever to receive the honor. By the time America fell in love with Oprah Winfrey the talk show host, she had already captured the nation's attention with her poignant portrayal of Sofia in Steven Spielberg's 1985 adaptation of Alice Walker's novel, The Color Purple. Winfrey's performance earned her nominations for an Oscar and a Golden Globe Award as Best Supporting Actress. Critics again lauded her performance in Native Son, a movie adaptation of Richard Wright's classic 1940 novel. Her love of acting and her desire to bring quality entertainment projects into production prompted her to form her own production company, Harpo Productions, Inc., in 1986. Today, Harpo is a formidable force in film and television production, as well as magazine publishing and the Internet. In 1988, Harpo Productions, Inc. acquired ownership and all production responsibilities for The Oprah Winfrey Show from Capitol Cities/ABC, making Oprah Winfrey the first woman in history to own and produce her own talk show. The following year, Harpo produced its first television miniseries, The Women of Brewster Place, with Oprah Winfrey as star and Executive Producer. It was quickly followed by the TV movies There Are No Children Here (1993), and Before Women Had Wings(1997), which she both produced and appeared in. Initially, The Oprah Winfrey Show followed a model established by other daytime talk shows, employing sensational stories and outrageous guests to attract viewers, but since the 1990s, Oprah began to emphasize spiritual values, healthy living and self-help, and her program became more popular than ever. Motivated in part by her own memories of childhood abuse, she initiated a campaign to establish a national database of convicted child abusers, and testified before a U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee on behalf of a National Child Protection Act. President Clinton signed the "Oprah Bill" into law in 1993, establishing the national database she had sought, which is now available to law enforcement agencies and concerned parties across the country. Oprah's show also continued to attract the top names in the entertainment industry; a 1993 interview with the reclusive entertainer Michael Jackson drew a hundred million viewers, making it the most watched interview in television history. Oprah Winfrey was named one of the "100 Most Influential People of the 20th Century" by Time magazine, and in 1998 received a Lifetime Achievement Award from the National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences. Despite her complete dominance of the daytime talk show field, Oprah Winfrey had not given up her acting ambitions. In 1998, she produced and starred in the feature film Beloved, adapted from the book by the Nobel Prize-winning American author Toni Morrison. Winfrey has long used her television program to champion the works of authors she admires, including Morrison, and her longtime friend Maya Angelou. Her influence over the publishing industry exploded when she began her on-air book club in 1996. "Oprah Book Club" selections became instant bestsellers, and in 1999 Winfrey received the National Book Foundation's 50th anniversary gold medal for her service to books and authors. She herself has authored five books. A proposed book on weight loss, to be co-written with her personal trainer, has received a publisher's advance fee reported to be the highest in history. Oprah Winfrey's business interests have extended well beyond her own production company. She is one of the partners in Oxygen Media, Inc., a cable channel and interactive network presenting programming designed primarily for women. With her success, she has also become one of the world's most generous philanthropists. In 2000, Oprah's Angel Network began presenting a $100,000 "Use Your Life Award" to people who are using their own lives to improve the lives of others. She now publishes two magazines, O, The Oprah Magazine, and O at Home. The launch of her first magazine was the most successful start-up in the history of the industry. When Forbes published its list of America's billionaires for the year 2003, it disclosed that Oprah Winfrey was the first African-American woman to become a billionaire. The Oprah Winfrey Show remained as popular as ever, airing in 140 countries around the world. Many of her regular guests, including Dr. Phil McGraw and Dr. Mehmet Oz, have gone on to shows of their own, produced by Oprah's Harpo Productions. Over the years, she has also used her program to promote the many philanthropic ventures she supports. After filming a Christmas program in South Africa, she established the Oprah Winfrey Leadership Academy for Girls, near Johannesburg. Her legendary generosity has extended not only to her favorite charities, but to her loyal viewers. She celebrated the beginning of her 20th season on national television by giving every member of the studio audience a brand new Pontiac automobile. Two decades after she first established herself as a national presence, Oprah Winfrey was still devoting much of her prodigious energy to film and television production. In 2005, she produced a film adaptation of Zora Neale Hurston's novel, Their Eyes Were Watching God, with a screenplay by Suzan-Lori Parks. The same year, she produced a successful Broadway musical version of The Color Purple. As an actress, she has been heard in a number of successful animated films, including Charlotte's Web, Bee Movie and The Princess and the Frog. In the 2008 presidential election, Winfrey publicly endorsed a political candidate for the first time, hosting a fundraiser for Senator Barack Obama and appearing with him at campaign events. It is widely believed that her support was crucial to his winning the Democratic nomination -- and the Presidency itself. In that election year, she also announced plans for a new broadcasting venture with the Discovery Health Channel, to be renamed Oprah Winfrey Network (OWN). In a 2010 interview on the Larry King program at the end of that year, she announced her decision to end her run on The Oprah Winfrey Show. The final broadcast took place on May 25, 2011, after 24 seasons and over 5,000 broadcasts. The end of the syndicated program was not the end of Oprah Winfrey's broadcasting career. She now hosts a nightly program, Oprah's Lifeclass, on the Oprah Winfrey Network. Oprah Winfrey makes her principal home on a 42-acre ocean-view estate in Montecito, California, just south of Santa Barbara, but also owns homes in another six states and the island of Antigua. The business press measures her wealth in numerous superlatives: the highest-paid performer on television, the richest self-made woman in America, and the richest African-American of the 20th century. More difficult to calculate is her profound influence over the way people around the world read, eat, exercise, feel and think about themselves and the world around them. She appears on every list of the world's leading opinion-makers, and has been rightly called "the most powerful woman in the world." Her wide-ranging philanthropic efforts were recognized by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences in 2011 with a special Oscar statuette, the Jean Hersholt

The Wizard of Menlo Park

People often say Edison was a genius. He answered, "Genius is hard work, stick-to-it-iveness, and common sense." Thomas Alva Edison was born February 11, 1847 in Milan, Ohio (pronounced MY-lan). In 1854, when he was seven, the family moved to Michigan, where Edison spent the rest of his childhood. "Al," as he was called as a boy, went to school only a short time. He did so poorly that his mother, a former teacher, taught her son at home. Al learned to love reading, a habit he kept for the rest of his life. He also liked to make experiments in the basement. Al not only played hard, but also worked hard. At the age of 12 he sold fruit, snacks and newspapers on a train as a "news butcher." (Trains were the newest way to travel, cutting through the American wilderness.) He even printed his own newspaper, the Grand Trunk Herald, on a moving train. At 15, Al roamed the country as a "tramp telegrapher." Using a kind of alphabet called Morse Code, he sent and received messages over the telegraph. Even though he was already losing his hearing, he could still hear the clicks of the telegraph. In the next seven years he moved over a dozen times, often working all night, taking messages for trains and even for the Union Army during the Civil War. In his spare time, he took things apart to see how they worked. Finally, he decided to invent things himself. After the failure of his first invention, the electric vote recorder, Edison moved to New York City. There he improved the way the stock ticker worked. This was his big break. By 1870 his company was manufacturing his stock ticker in Newark, New Jersey. He also improved the telegraph, making it send up to four messages at once. During this time he married his first wife, Mary Stilwell, on Christmas Day, 1871. They had three children -- Marion, Thomas, Jr., and William. Wanting a quieter spot to do more inventing, Edison moved from Newark to Menlo Park, New Jersey, in 1876. There he built his most famous laboratory. He was not alone in Menlo Park. Edison hired "muckers" to help him out. These "muckers" came from all over the world to make their fortune in America. They often stayed up all night working with the "chief mucker," Edison himself. He is sometime called the "Wizard of Menlo Park" because he created two of his three greatest works there. The phonograph was the first machine that could record the sound of someone's voice and play it back. In 1877, Edison recorded the first words on a piece of tin foil. He recited the nursery rhyme "Mary Had a Little Lamb," and the phonograph played the words back to him. This was invented by a man whose hearing was so poor that he thought of himself as "deaf"! Starting in 1878, Edison and the muckers worked on one of his greatest achievements. The electric light system was more than just the incandescent lamp, or "light bulb." Edison also designed a system of power plants that make the electrical power and the wiring that brings it to people's homes. Imagine all the things you "plug in." What would your life be like without them? In 1885, one year after his first wife died, Edison met a 20-year-old woman named Mina Miller. Her father was an inventor in Edison's home state of Ohio. Edison taught her Morse Code. Even when others were around, the couple could "talk" to each other secretly. One day he tapped a question into her hand: would she marry him? She tapped back the word "yes." Mina Edison wanted a home in the country, so Edison bought Glenmont, a 29-room home with 13-1/2 acres of land in West Orange, New Jersey. They married on February 24, 1886 and had three children: Madeleine, Charles and Theodore. A year later, Edison built a laboratory in West Orange that was ten times larger than the one in Menlo Park. In fact, it was one of the largest laboratories in the world, almost as famous as Edison himself. Well into the night, laboratory buildings glowed with electric light while the Wizard and his "muckers" turned Edison's dreams into inventions. Once, the "chief mucker" worked for three days straight, taking only short naps. Edison earned half of his 1,093 patents in West Orange. But Edison did more than invent. Here Edison could think of ways to make a better phonograph, for example, build it with his muckers, have them test it and make it work, then manufacture it in the factories that surrounded his laboratory. This improved phonograph could then be sold throughout the world. Not only did Edison improve the phonograph several times, but he also worked on X-rays, storage batteries, and the first talking doll. At West Orange he also worked on one of his greatest ideas: motion pictures, or "movies." The inventions made here changed the way we live even today. He worked here until his death on October 18, 1931, at the age of 84. By that time, everyone had heard of the "Wizard" and looked up to him. The whole world called him a genius. But he knew that having a good idea was not enough. It takes hard work to make dreams into reality. That is why Edison liked to say, "Genius is 1% inspiration and 99% perspiration."