Before They Had the Mercenary Build: Check Out the Expendables 2 Cast Before They Were Stars
Countless little boys (and a number of little girls too) grow up dreaming of taking down the bad guys by any means necessary. Even those who don’t start out as typical athlete types can find lucrative ways to make their fantasies work in the real world—from the army to the police force closer to home. But a select few get to live out these ideas well beyond what their imaginations could have comprehended for them as the stars of action hero franchises like Expendables. Do you think these young faces would have believed you if you told them they would grow up to become some of the hottest action stars in Hollywood? By Danielle TurchianoIt’s hard to imagine a time when Arnold Schwarzenegger wasn’t a household name. Long before he was Trent Mauser, mercenary leader, in The Expendables—hell, even before he was the “Governator” of California—he was known simply as the Terminator. But once upon a time, he was just a 10-year-old boy with dreams of moving to America who decided to use bodybuilding as the means to get him here. He captured titles like Mr. Olympia, which ultimately led to his first acting work, as Hercules in a 1970 production that allowed him to learn as he went. He got more notice in 1977 for a dramatic documentation of bodybuilding, Pumping Iron, and then finally broke out into the mainstream in 1982 with Conan the Barbarian. The 1980s were certainly his heyday, with the action genre hotter than ever, but he rode that streak well into the early 2000s, in films like Predator, Total Recall, Eraser, and Batman & Robin, in addition to the aforementioned Terminator franchise. A few detours came here and there for lighter fare, more family films (Twins, Kindergarten Cop, and Jingle All the Way), but it was only his political career that really kept him out of fake-harm’s way in action films for an extended period of time.