Talk to his wife and you’ll get a rather different story.
But in Arnold Schwarzenegger’s mind at least, he is still a hero who deserves respect and adulation.
The shamed former governor of California has commissioned a series of statues of himself to remind the world how he looked in his muscle-bound prime.
The 64-year-old has requested the creation of at least three larger-than-life bronze creations which will stand 8ft tall and weigh 580lbs.
They will be based on a smaller sculpture created in 1980, the year Schwarzenegger won his seventh Mr Olympia title.
The statues all depict him in a classic body-builder pose and have been super-sized to ‘heroic’ scale, which is one-and-a-quarter times life size.
The first of them will be shipped to a museum dedicated to Schwarzenegger's life at his childhood home in Thal, Austria.
A second will be sent to Columbus, Ohio, where the Schwarzenegger-inspired Arnold Fitness Weekend is held annually.
Schwarzenegger himself will keep the third one but he has discussed the possibility of commissioning four more, said Tim Parks, the owner of Oregon-based TW Bronze, which is making the statues.
Glory days: The former Mr Olympia in 1980
Glory days: The former Mr Olympia in 1980
He added that when the Terminator star came to his workshop to view the first one he said: ‘This is fantastic. This is fantastic’.
Parks said Schwarzenegger only asked for one change - that the statues be a little darker.
He also suggested that seven statues would equal the number of times he had won the Mr Olympia competition, to which his 64-year-old client replied: ‘Perfect’.
Schwarzenegger’s obsession with his body has been well documented and dates back to his youth when he first began body-building.
The 1977 documentary Pumping Iron depicts him as engaging in psychological warfare to beat his opponents in muscle competitions - and endlessly posing in front of the mirror to admire himself.
His narcissism came back to haunt him this year when it was revealed to have been one of the reasons why he cheated on his wife Maria Shriver with their nanny, Mildred Baena.
A dossier complied by Schwarzenegger’s own political backers said at the time: ‘He constantly needs to be told he is handsome, an Adonis....he sees himself as the dominant, beautiful one.’
He and Shriver, 55, have now separated and Schwarzenegger has been forced to apologise to her and their four children.
He is currently writing a memoir of his life which will be called: ‘Total Recall: My Unbelievably True Life Story’.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/tvshowbiz/article-2042051/Arnold-Schwarzenegger-orders-THREE-bronze-statues-body-building-prime.html---------============------------
What I think about this: Good for him, he must sorely miss being in shape given that it's impossible for him to be half as good as he was. Getting old is horrible, especially for us vain bodybuilders
