Celebrity of the English Magazine
|
|
|
Celebrity of the English Magazine
|
|
News How
— and Why — End of Days Finale Changed Production on the film, which will be out Nov. 24, was delayed for two months to change the nature of the climactic battle scene after religious leaders objected to the original scenario. While we've always had little doubt over who'll emerge victorious from the epic fight, the details of Days' end were more easily negotiable. Spoiler warning!
Says the two-time Terminator, the new ending is "spectacular and spiritual. The message is about peace and faith." What manner of devil is Schwarzenegger up against? Byrne tells the Washington Post about his approach to playing Satan, "I wanted to play a Devil who was completely accessible … the kind of guy who could sit down beside you in a bar and … seduce you into doing whatever he wants … like a really astute politician." Peter Hyams (The Relic) helmed the apocalyptic actioner after music video director Marcus Nispel left over the usual artistic differences. Copyright ©1999 ABC News Internet Ventures.
Bout da man Occupation(s):
Actor, Author, Director, Restaurateur
Born the second child of a police chief in Graz, Austria, young Arnold
was raised in conditions the youth of today don't even hear about from
their grandparents anymore: he was fourteen before the Schwarzeneggers
could finally afford to furnish their home with such amenities as indoor
plumbing, a refrigerator, and a telephone. His chores began at 6:00 a.m.
every day, and when those were done, Arnold and his brother were then
required to perform fifteen minutes of squats and sit-ups before they were
served breakfast. The boys were free to spend Sunday nights roaming about
the town, which boasted a movie theater, among other amusements, but each
was required to compose a ten-page essay about the evening's activities
upon returning home.
Today's athlete would have hired an agent and waited for endorsement
contracts to come flooding in, but the tireless Schwarzenegger was out to
build Rome in a day. He had scarcely come ashore when he landed his first
starring role in a feature film, 1970's Hercules Goes to New York,
and he so impressed Lucille Ball during an appearance on The Merv
Griffin Show that she handed him a plum role in the pilot episode of
her new sitcom Happy Anniversary and Goodbye. Hercules
proved a laughable mess; the sitcom never aired; and in his second movie
outing, in Robert Altman's The Long Goodbye, Schwarzenegger got the
tar beat out of him by the diminutive Elliott Gould. Undaunted, the
fearless entrepreneur threw himself into other pursuits, including
starting up a profitable bricklaying partnership with fellow bodybuilder
Franco Columbu that in turn provided capital to fund a mail-order business
selling fitness books and cassettes. The success of these ventures
bankrolled the purchase of an apartment building, Schwarzenegger's first
in a series of shrewd real-estate investments. Somewhere along the way, he
found the time to complete correspondence courses from the University of
Wisconsin, which eventually awarded him a bachelor's degree in business
and international economics. By the time the bodybuilding documentary Pumping
Iron had made him a national celebrity in 1977, Schwarzenegger was
already driving a Mercedes Benz and living in a $200,000 home in Los
Angeles.
Shortly after coming into his own at the box office, Schwarzenegger
pulled off an equally impressive coup in the celebrity-marriage department
when he won the heart and hand of Maria Shriver, niece to slain President
John F. Kennedy and his equally famous brothers, Robert and Ted. The two
met at the Robert F. Kennedy Pro-Celebrity Tennis Tournament in 1977, and
subsequently dated for eight years. Schwarzenegger finally asked that
magical question during a rowing excursion on an Austrian lake near his
boyhood home. The couple tied the knot in 1986, and theirs has since been
an exemplary marriage, producing four children to date. Despite having
married into the most notably Democratic family in America, Schwarzenegger
has remained a staunch Republican since becoming a naturalized American
citizen in 1983. He even served as the Chairman of the President's Council
on Sports and Fitness during Republican George Bush's administration.
One of the elite few in Hollywood who command eight-figure salaries,
Schwarzenegger has his pick of scripts. Next up, he stars in The Sixth
Day, a film the actor describes as "a suspense thriller about
cloning." Schwarzenegger has also been mentioned to play characters
ranging from Swiss archer William Tell to Spiderman nemesis "Doctor
Octopus." Other possibilities include roles in a Ridley Scott remake
of I Am Legend and a sixth sequel to Planet of the Apes; he
may even go behind the camera in the near future, something he has
done twice already for cable-television productions. |
|
|
What had the clergy clamoring for a rewrite? An armed-for-Armageddon
Arnie, that's what. In a Matrix-style scenario, Schwarzenegger's
mortal hero relied on old-fashioned heavy artillery to send Satan back to
hell, reports the BBC. However, religious leaders objected, and another
ending was cooked up. Now Schwarzenegger's Jericho Cane character relies
on an undetermined spiritual means of dispatching his evil enemy.
WHEN is a muscle-bound
Austrian megahunk with an accent thicker than a gallon jug of molasses as
American as baseball, Mom, and apple pie? When his name is Arnold
Schwarzenegger, of course. From the moment he arrived in the United States
to compete in the 1968 Mr. Universe competition, the man once known among
his body-building peers as the "Austrian Oak" started making his
own American Dream come true. Raised in poverty by strict, yet loving,
parents, Schwarzenegger was barely into his teens when he pinned his hopes
on bodybuilding as his ticket to the top. Self-discipline and tireless
training paid off in spades when he was crowned Mr. Universe at the age of
twenty, becoming the youngest man ever to win the title. Just one year
later, he was making movies, and not too long after that, he was making
millions buying and selling real estate. All of these milestones were
followed by U.S. citizenship; marriage to a Kennedy; a special appointment
as a presidential advisor; and mind-boggling success as an actor with a
stunning string of top-grossing blockbusters to his credit.
It was when he began lifting weights to train for the local soccer team
that Schwarzenegger first sensed that he was destined for greatness.
"When I was fifteen," he recalls, "I had a clear vision of
myself being onstage winning the Mr. Universe contest." He pursued
this goal so assiduously that he joined the Austrian army at the age of
eighteen for the sole purpose of supplementing his training diet with
fresh meat. One month after enlisting, he went AWOL to compete in the Mr.
Junior Europe contest, a stunt which earned him not only the first of his
many bodybuilding titles, but also a year in the brig. Doing time didn't
slow him down a bit, and the following year, after leaving the army,
Schwarzenegger collected the titles of Mr. Europe and Best-Built Man of
Europe, and also won the International Powerlifting Championship. In 1968,
he came to the United States to defend the Mr. Universe title he'd won the
previous year, and was rudely welcomed with a second-place finish--perhaps
the only setback of his entire bodybuilding career. But thereafter, he
dominated the sport so thoroughly--he won four more Mr. Universe titles
and six consecutive Mr. Olympia titles--that he retired after seven years
because he felt he "wasn't giving others a chance to win."
Although he won a Golden Globe Best New Actor award for his performance
in 1975 Stay Hungry, cinematic success proved elusive for the
genial Austrian giant; it was not until 1982 that he landed a starring
part in a major feature. Schwarzenegger incarnated to a tee the title role
of Conan the Barbarian, a character based on pulp writer Robert E.
Howard's mythical wandering warrior, and though the critics mercilessly
ridiculed both movie and star, the film was a box-office smash and its
Austrian lead with the mouthful of a name was finally on his way. The
landmark performance of his entire career came two years later, when
Schwarzenegger collaborated with rookie director James Cameron on the
science-fiction thriller The Terminator. Originally slated to
appear as the film's hero, Schwarzenegger convinced Cameron to let him
instead play the title role, that of an emotionless, unstoppable
cybernetic assassin--a "Steel Reaper." Made on a barely-believable
budget of $6 million, The Terminator yielded a financial bonanza.
As for Schwarzenegger, he became a one-man action franchise in the wake of
the film's success, turning everything from Commando (1985) to Total
Recall (1990) into box-office gold, and even displaying a surprising
gift for comedy in the equally successful blockbusters Twins (1988)
and Kindergarten Cop (1990).
Schwarzenegger's box-office domination hit its zenith in 1991 when he
re-teamed with director Cameron for Terminator 2, his most
commercially successful film to date. He stumbled a bit with the 1993
action-comedy The Last Action Hero, and his fans were less than
impressed with his turn as the world's first pregnant man in Junior
the following year, but Schwarzenegger made it up to them by getting back
down to the business of blowing stuff up and kicking ass in True Lies
(1994), Eraser (1996), and 1997's Batman & Robin (in
which he played the villainous "Mr. Freeze"). After a two-year-long
hiatus from the screen — a period during which he underwent heart valve
surgery — the Austrian Oak returned in the millennial-mayhem flick End
of Days, in which he played a flawed and vulnerable hero who attempts
to save the world from Satan's plans to spawn with a mortal bride.