Before Acting, He was a Successful Bricklayer.
We can infer that Arnold was in a less-than-ideal financial situation prior to the mid-1980s, when his acting career began to take off. The reason for this is that his career didn’t begin until then. As a matter of fact, it appears that the bodybuilder had plenty of money to spend in the years leading up to his breakthrough on the silver screen.
All of this was made possible thanks to a bodybuilder friend of his. Franco Columbu was a skilled bricklayer when Arnold Schwarzenegger moved to the United States in his early twenties. By marketing themselves as “European bricklayers and masonry experts,” Arnold came up with the idea for the two of them to sell services to wealthy people in California. If the transaction went as planned, they would be able to walk away with a sizable amount of money.