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"PinterestFacebookPhotographed by Brigitte Lacombe in West Hollywood, California\nPhotographed by Brigitte Lacombe in West Hollywood, California\nYes, as the daughter of the late Eunice Kennedy Shriver and the niece of President John F. Kennedy, Maria Shriver is part of America&amp;#39;s most legendary family, but you&amp;#39;d better not stop there&amp;#8212;because she certainly didn&amp;#39;t. She once blurted to a writer that she hates being described as &amp;quot;the daughter of, the girlfriend of, the niece of,&amp;quot; adding that she wants to be someone &amp;quot;considered for her work alone.&amp;quot;\nToday, at 54, Shriver has more than proven that she&amp;#39;s her own woman. Defying expectation, she married Republican muscleman (now California governor) Arnold Schwarzenegger. She&amp;#39;s had a big-time TV journalism career and has written seven books. But this matriarch of a Lakers-loving household (recent census: four kids, three dogs, one pig and a pony) is still busy becoming the person she wants to be. &amp;quot;Maria,&amp;quot; says her friend Jamie Lee Curtis, &amp;quot;is always evolving, peeling the layers back, to get at why she is on this planet.&amp;quot; In 2009 Shriver answered that question by producing an Emmy-winning HBO documentary on Alzheimer&amp;#39;s, from which her father, Sargent Shriver, suffers. She continues to helm California&amp;#39;s Women&amp;#39;s Conference, a mecca for female empowerment, and she helped Michelle Obama kick off United We Serve, a national effort to get Americans involved in volunteer work. Her newest undertaking: A Woman&amp;#39;s Nation, the massive study she&amp;#39;s leading that will point to ways government and businesses can help women manage their intense, multiple-role lives. Friends can only stand back and marvel at this human whirlwind. &amp;quot;It is, as usual, Maria University,&amp;quot; says Curtis with pride, &amp;quot;and we&amp;#39;re all enrolled.&amp;quot;"^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.glamour.com/story/maria-shriver>