Once, he was a box office terminator. But
now that Arnold Schwarzenegger has lost some of his muscle in Hollywood,
stories of his boorish behavior can no longer be routinely erased.
Then again, he'd make a helluva politician.
The tabloid press got a nice Christmas present late last year when
Arnold Schwarzenegger tore through a day of publicity work in London,
promoting his latest film, The 6th Day, which had just opened
there. In less than 24 hours, the star was said to have attempted
to, as high school boys used to say, cop a little feel from three
different female talk-show hosts. The level of consternation expressed
by those who received this hands-on treatment from the hulking,
Austrian-born international superstar ranged from none whatsoever
(Denise Van Outen of The Big Breakfast invites her guests
to lie on a bed with her and, hence, probably has a rather elastic
definition of what constitutes inappropriate behavior) to irked
(on tape, Celebrity interviewer Melanie Sykes looks a little
thrown off after Arnold gives her a very definite squeeze on the
rib cage, directly under her right breast) to, finally, righteously
indignant. Anna Richardson of Big Screen claims that after
the cameras stopped rolling for her interview segment, Schwarzenegger,
apparently attempting to ascertain whether Richardson’s breasts
were real, tweaked her nipple and then laughed at her objections.
“I left the room quite shaken,” she says. “What was more upsetting
was that his people rushed to protect him and scapegoated me, and
not one person came to apologize afterward.”
No
apologies, indeed: A subsequent statement from Schwarzenegger attorney
Martin Singer characterized Richardson as someone trying to get
her “15 minutes of fame.” After all, why else would she create such
an “outrageous fabrication” (Singer’s phrase) against a married
man—Schwarzenegger has been wed to NBC’s Maria Shriver since 1986—a
father of four, someone who ceaselessly espouses family values in
the press? On the other hand, the stills of Schwarzenegger .grinning
as he pats Van Outen’s hip or of his give-me-some-sugar-baby expression
as he tries to draw Sykes close to him are a little unsettling.
Was Arnold jet-lagged? Going through a midlife crisis?
“You don’t get it,” says a producer who’s worked with Schwarzenegger.
“That’s the way Arnold always behaves. For some reason, [this time]
the studio or the publicists couldn’t put enough pressure on the
women to kill the story.”
Terminating bad press was once relatively easy for Schwarzenegger,
who for much of the ’80s and a good part of the ’90s was a veritable
money-making machine for the studios. And while some of his most
recent films have enjoyed less-than-stellar box office performances,
he is still a very huge star and one of the highest-paid actors
in the world: He reportedly received $25 million for his work in
the 1999 disappointment End of Days. Accordingly, Schwarzenegger
films are always big-budget affairs; as such, they provide lots
of jobs to lots of people and generate lots of money to lots of
studio suits and other peripheral players. Arnold is not just a
rich movie star; he’s the straw that stirs the drinks. The sort
of person, in other words, who tends to get indulged. A lot. -->
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