Stay Hungry is a 1976 American comedy-drama film by director Bob Rafelson from a screenplay by Charles Gaines (adapted from his 1972 novel of the same name).

[1][2][3] The story centers on a young scion from Birmingham, Alabama, played by Jeff Bridges, who gets involved in a shady real-estate deal.

He becomes romantically interested in the gym's receptionist (Sally Field) and drawn to the carefree lifestyle of the Austrian bodybuilder Joe Santo (Arnold Schwarzenegger), who is training there for the Mr. Universe competition.

Schwarzenegger won a Golden Globe for Best Acting Debut in a Motion Picture, but it was not his true debut role; he had played Hercules (as Arnold Strong) in the 1970 film Hercules in New York, a gangster's henchman in Robert Altman's 1973 film The Long Goodbye, and a masseur in the 1974 television movie Happy Anniversary and Goodbye.

Craig Blake is a young Southerner born of a wealthy family, but left lonely and idle after his parents died in a plane crash.

He is content to spend his time fishing, hunting, and puttering around his large family mansion in Birmingham, Alabama, inhabited only by himself and a butler.

As Blake moves forward with the business deal, he is smitten with the receptionist, Mary Tate Farnsworth, and befriends bodybuilder Joe Santo, who aspires to win the Mr. Universe title.

[5] In her autobiography, Sally Field wrote that during the audition with director Bob Rafelson, she was asked by him to take her shirt off and kiss him.