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. -->