Arnold 2.0: how Calum Von Moger played young Schwarzenegger to perfection in ‘Bigger’
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Australian celebrity and Instagram star Calum Von Moger is probably feeling a bit better these days after film critics have given him the thumbs up for his performance as young Arnold Schwarzenegger in the new movie Bigger.
Von Moger was selected from hundreds of hopefuls last year to play the part of the Austrian Oak in the movie that traces the rise of the Weider brothers – Joe and Ben – who fought adversity as Canadian Jews to build a fitness empire after “discovering” Schwarzenegger in the 1960s.
The 28-year-old Los Angeles-based Australian is a well-known YouTube and Instagram star with more than two million followers before he took on the role of a lifetime.
For a start, Von Moger does strike an uncanny resemblance to the seven-time Mr Olympia and he played the part in the George Gallo-directed movie, based on true events, to perfection according to film critics. In the movie, Von Moger, who is of Dutch and Austrian descent, looks eerily like the most famous bodybuilder in the world with muscles and height (they are both 1.88m tall) to match. Even his Austrian accent impressed the former California governor himself.
The movie opened to a limited release in North America this month and although it has been generally been panned by critics, Von Moger saves the day as the stand-out star in his first movie role.
“I think I did all right [in the movie]. I’ll let you guys be the judge of that,” said Von Moger, who has 2.8 million Instagram followers, in an interview on his YouTube channel.
