The Transformation Of Patrick Schwarzenegger: From Nepo Baby To White Lotus Star

It's fair to say that Patrick Schwarzenegger has been having a moment. The son of bodybuilder-turned-movie star Arnold Schwarzenegger and ex-wife Maria Shriver, he's spent his life at the crossroads of Hollywood and politics. The latter, in fact, looms just as large as the former; not only did his father pause his movie career to serve two terms as the governor of California, his mother is a member of the Kennedy family, arguably among America's most powerful political dynasties of the 20th century.

While his acting career has yet to approach the levels of his famous father, the younger Schwarzenegger's rise up the Hollywood ladder has certainly been a rapid one. In 2025, he's been garnering rave reviews for his performance as the callow son of a wealthy couple in the critically acclaimed 3rd season of "The White Lotus," part of a cast that includes American actor Walton Goggins and British "Sex Education" star Aimee Lou Wood. 

Given all that, it's practically a certainty that the best is yet to come for this talented young actor. To find out more about him, read on to experience the transformation of Patrick Schwarzenegger, from nepo baby to "White Lotus" star.

Patrick Schwarzenegger was born on September 18, 1993 in Los Angeles, the third child (and first son) of Arnold Schwarzenegger and Maria Shriver. Growing up as the scion of one of Hollywood's biggest movie stars, young Patrick grew up in an atmosphere of wealth and privilege. Not surprisingly, he also received a behind-the-scenes look at Hollywood moviemaking when he was still a kid. "My favorite activity growing up was my dad yanking me out of school early and getting to go to set," Patrick recounted to V Magazine. "For a kid, it was like a dream," he added.

Of course, the "Terminator" star was also insistent that his kids didn't grow up spoiled. That was evident when a 9-year-old Patrick didn't bother to make his bed one morning, resulting in his dad throwing his mattress out the window into the yard.

Then, there was Arnold's response to his son's tendency to take extra-long, extra-hot showers. He issued a warning, telling him to limit his showers to 5 minutes. When that didn't work, he took extreme action. "In Munich, they have the showers that have those timers that people put money into and then after the money ran out, the cold water came out," the elder Schwarzenegger told People. "I said, 'I'm going to get one like that,' and that's exactly what I got." The next time his son stepped into the shower, and exceeded the 5-minute time limit, he experienced a Munich-style shower firsthand. "And all of a sudden, we heard downstairs, the scream," Arnold recalled.

As a kid, Patrick Schwarzenegger and his family lived in Los Angeles. However, his life changed when dad Arnold Schwarzenegger was elected California's governor in 2003. That resulted in a move from the family's palatial LA home to the Governor's Mansion in the state's capital, Sacramento.

Not only did that mean leaving behind friends and shifting to a new school, it also put an end to his treasured visits with his old man to watch him make movies, hanging out at Universal Studios and enjoying the theme park activities while his dad was on set. "When my dad ran for governor, I was maybe 10," he told Front Row Features. "So, when you're that age, you're more interested in movie sets." While Patrick admitted he learned a lot from watching his father run America's most populous state, he still missed the Hollywood lifestyle he came to appreciate as a child. "Obviously, being a governor is amazing," he added, "but for me as a kid, going to the film sets was more fun for me."

His father was well aware of how his son and siblings felt about being in Sacramento. "That's why my kids hated when I became governor," the former bodybuilding champion explained to the Los Angeles Times, "because they felt like the fun days were over."

Patrick Schwarzenegger was bitten by the acting bug at a young age, thanks to all those times he accompanied father Arnold Schwarzenegger to the sets of his movies. "This idea that my dad would go in as 'dad' and come out as Mr. Freeze or as Terminator, that's what drew me in at first," he expressed to V Magazine. That led to a small role in the 2006 comedy "Benchwarmers," which served as his movie debut upon its premiere when he was 12.

As a teen, Patrick attended the Brentwood School in Los Angeles and experienced a fairly normal adolescence. Still, Hollywood beckoned, and he began to seriously consider following in his father's footsteps by becoming an actor. "I started doing plays at school," he recalled. When he graduated, he informed his parents he was going to embark on a career as an actor — an idea his father quickly kiboshed. "My dad was like, 'No, you're not. You're going to school, and you can study acting, but you can also get a degree in business,'" he told People.

Patrick went on to study at the University of Southern California's Marshall School of Business, minoring in cinematic arts. While attending college, he also landed a supporting role in the 2012 film, "Stuck in Love." He went on to earn his degree, but it was clear what direction his heart was leading him.

One thing that Patrick Schwarzenegger learned from his parents is the importance of giving back, and he grew up with a keen sense of the importance of philanthropy. "My grandmother always said, when you receive a paycheck, you always have to put a certain amount to your savings, and 10% right away to charity," he told Details, recalling the wise words of his mom's mother, Eunice Kennedy Shriver, who founded the Special Olympics.

Schwarzenegger made that evident in 2009 when he was just 15 years old. That was when he founded Project360, a clothing line that donated a portion of its proceeds to charity. "My mom raised me with the idea of doing public service, and I definitely want to go in that direction. But I also want to follow in my dad's entrepreneurial footsteps," he added, explaining how he was able to meld both those influences into Project360. "My dad helps me a lot with my business side, and my mom and my grandparents had a huge influence with the charitable component and the idea of giving back," he told Women's Wear Daily.

He sold the business in 2014. "I have a lot of things I want to accomplish," he explained to The Irish Times. "It's not about making a lot of money. It's about doing what I enjoy."

While Patrick Schwarzenegger was dabbling in philanthropic entrepreneurship, he also discovered he could make money with his good lucks. In 2011, he signed with LA Models. That led him, at the age of 17, to appear in a campaign for Hudson Jeans, where the shirtless teenager could be seen on a high-profile billboard atop Sunset Boulevard in LA. "I got the offer from LA Models and we talked it over," he told Women's Wear Daily. "I told my sister [Katherine] and my family. My sister wears the jeans all the time and she said, 'Do it, do it.' At first I was pretty nervous but [campaign co-star Georgia May Jagger, daughter of Rolling Stones frontman Mick Jagger] was extremely nice and a great person to work with."

So what did his famous folks think of their son's fashion campaign? "They loved it," Patrick said. "They support anything I do and I support anything they do ... They liked how it came out, and they think it's great that I'm starting to work and that I'm managing my time between high school and work."

In 2014, Schwarzenegger took a big step in his modeling career when he landed a high profile campaign with designer Tom Ford. He appeared in various ads opposite celebrity fashion model Gigi Hadid, who's experienced a stunning transformation over the course of her modeling career.

While attending college, Patrick Schwarzenegger continued to audition for acting roles. He wound up being hired for some of them, including the comedy "Grown Ups 2." Around that time, he was also cast as opposite Ariana Grande in her "Romeo and Juliet"-inspired music video for her 2013 single, "Right There."

As Schwarzenegger recalled in an appearance on the "Happy, Sad, Confused" podcast, he was approached by Grande's then-manager, Scooter Braun. "Ariana Grande was just starting," he explained. "I think it was her second big song or something like that ... We shot it for two days, and it was kind of like this cool moment, and then she really blew up, blew up after that."

Grande also recalled acting opposite Schwarzenegger in the video, in which they nuzzle and come near to kissing while swimming together in a pool. When asked what it was like to "make out" with Schwarzenegger, she balked. "No, we didn't make out," she said when interviewed by Extra. "We didn't even kiss. The director was like, 'Kiss, kiss!' And I was like, 'No.'" She did, however, explain, "We were in the water together and we got very close to kissing."

In 2014, Patrick Schwarzenegger shifted his entrepreneurial impulses from fashion to food. That led to him opening his own Blaze Pizza location, a chain pizza restaurant he opened within The Grove in Los Angeles. On the first day in business, long lines formed. "Today we have free pizza all day," Schwarzenegger told People, noting that his mom, Maria Shriver, had been on hand to greet customers.

According to Schwarzenegger — who was then a 20-year-old college student — he was a hands-on business proprietor. "We went around and did a raise of capital," he explained. "It's been my responsibility to oversee everything. I'm the owner, founder, pizza maker, pizza lover and anything else you want to throw on in there."

He did, however, credit his parents with helping him out with advice, particularly his father, Arnold Schwarzenegger. "He gave me tons of points," he told The Irish Times of how his father advised him. "But most of his advice comes back to working hard and making sure that when you wake up each and every day, that you want to do the thing that you're working on. That's really what it comes down to."

Back in 2014, Patrick Schwarzenegger was romantically involved with Miley Cyrus. That romance, however, didn't last long. The following year, they'd broken up. It was during this period that he met model Abby Champion, and that relationship has stood the test of time. In 2023, he and Champion announced their engagement in a sweet Instagram post. While a date hasn't been publicly announced, the pair is planning to walk down the aisle at some point in 2025.

Speaking with People, Schwarzenegger described their first meeting as one of those love-at-first-sight experiences. "I think that when we first met, there was obviously an attraction — physical attraction — and I thought she was the most beautiful girl that I had seen and had met," he said. "And [I] was interested in hanging out and going out on dates."

It took a while, however, for the two to come to the realization that they wanted to spend the rest of their lives together. "When we first met, I was 21, she was 18. So you're very different people and humans when you're that age versus now I'm 31, she's 27," he noted. "Over the course of the years, I just continuously fell in love with her more and more, with the kind of human that she was becoming and that the relationship was becoming."

After graduating college, Patrick Schwarzenegger got serious about becoming an actor and spent his days going to auditions. As a nepo baby, he quickly learned that while his last name carried a certain degree of cachet, it was also a double-edged sword. "Does it open up some doors for me or help me meet people?" he said of his parentage to Front Row Features. "Yeah, but again, everything in life, if you're not going to put the time in, if you're not going to work, if you're not dedicated, people can only care so much what your name is. If you're not going to put all of the work in, they'll say, 'Next.'"

He began getting cast, including a role in the TV horror-comedy series "Scream Queens" in 2015 and playing a soldier in the 2017 miniseries "The Long Road Home." "When Patrick auditioned, he had such a sincere quality that I thought he'd be a perfect fit," Mikko Alanne, creator of the latter, told Town & Country. "He has a natural instinct."

As Schwarzenegger told Interview, he was open to pretty much any type of role. "Just anything that's kind of different and challenging for me," he explained. "Every movie I try to play something a little bit different."

All that work in small supporting roles paid off when he was cast in "Midnight Sun," starring opposite the often-controversial Bella Thorne. In the 2018 coming-of-age drama, he played the boyfriend of Thorne's character, a teenage girl with a rare skin condition that essentially makes her allergic to sunlight. "I was the last component," Schwarzenegger told Front Row Features of how he came to land his first starring role in a film. "Bella was already on the project and I got involved through an audition and then I did a reading with the director, and then I had a chemistry read with Bella."

He threw himself into the role, even undergoing a physical transformation for his character, a competitive swimmer. "I had someone from the USC Swim Team train me four days a week for hours on end until I could get that [swimmer 's] body shape and understand what it's really like to be totally driven every day, going towards that goal of becoming the best swimmer," he told Parade.

Becoming a leading man for the first time was not something that came without a certain degree of anxiety. During an appearance on "Today," he recalled the first time he walked onto the film's set. "In the beginning it was nerve-racking," he admitted. 

With "Midnight Sun" under his belt, Patrick Schwarzenegger's subsequent roles were larger and more varied. Those included playing a psychotic imaginary friend of a troubled college student in "Daniel Isn't Real," starring opposite Ruby Rose in the action-thriller "Stowaway," and sharing top billing with Alex Pettyfer and Michael Shannon in crime drama "Echo Boomers."

He then landed his most high-profile role to that point, playing Todd Peterson in HBO's 2022 true-crime miniseries "The Staircase," based on the case of Michael Peterson (played by Colin Firth), who was accused of murdering his wife (Toni Collette). As Schwarzenegger told People, he worked diligently to get the job. "I was like, 'Holy s***, I've got to do everything I can to get this,'" he said. "To be surrounded by this kind of talent and these level of actors and actresses was something that was like a dream come true for me."

The following year, he landed a leading role in "Gen V," a spinoff of wildly popular superhero series "The Boys." Interestingly, it was his failed audition to play superhero Homelander (a role that ultimately went to Antony Starr) in "The Boys" that led him to be cast in the spinoff. "To work with them was a dream come true," he told Hollywood Elite of being part of "Gen V." "Bringing me into that world, for an actor, it's fun."

It's fair to say that no project in the acting career of Patrick Schwarzenegger has brought him as much attention as his role in the 3rd season of "The White Lotus," which premiered in February 2025. "I do feel like this is getting my work out to a wider audience," he told The Hollywood Reporter.

With his star on the rise, increasing opportunities certainly began coming his way. "But I don't have an ego about it," he added. "If a great director called me tomorrow and said I've got a one-page scene for you in my movie, I'd do it. I'm trying to be picky about what I do now, but that just means working with great directors and writers, so I'll take anything that lets me keep learning."

While some actors might be content to rest on their laurels, that's antithetical to Schwarzenegger's philosophy that, despite the success he's achieved, there's always room for improvement. "I've been in theater school for the last 10-plus years," he told People. "I take classes every week. For me, it's about continuously finding ways to learn and grow."