Claim: Arnold Schwarzenegger was an actor.

The Terminator series is a science-fiction franchise created by James Cameron and Gale Anne Hurd . It encompasses a series of films , comics , novels , and additional media concerning battles between Skynet 's synthetic intelligent machine network , and John Connor 's Resistance forces and the rest of the human race . Skynet 's most well-known products in its genocidal goals are the various terminator models , such as the T-800 -LRB- Model 101 -RRB- , who was portrayed by Arnold Schwarzenegger from the first film , and similar units he also portrayed in the later films . As of February 2010 , the franchise has generated $ 3 billion in revenue .