Indian envoy warns of 'big red line,' days after charges laid in Nijjar case
India's envoy to Canada insists relations between the two countries are positive overall, despite what he describes as 'a lot of noise.'
The many lives of Arnold Schwarzenegger get neatly divided into three equal parts in “Arnold,” a Netflix documentary-cum-self-led tour through his remarkable success story as bodybuilder, actor and politician, each more improbable than the other. Now acting again (in a series for Netflix, conveniently), Schwarzenegger’s missteps aren’t ignored in the doc, but the emphasis is on how he pursued and achieved his goals, envisioning his stardom before making it a reality.
Spanning the globe from his early home in Thal, Austria to chomping on cigars in his US estates, the docuseries finds time for amusing asides, like Schwarzenegger’s competitive feud in the 1980s with Sylvester Stallone, a rift that became so toxic, Stallone says, they couldn’t be in the same room together.
The two have long since mended those fences, and Stallone speaks fondly of Schwarzenegger now, saying, “We are the last dinosaurs.”
Breezily told by director Lesley Chilcott, “Arnold” starts with Schwarzenegger’s worship of bodybuilder Reg Park, who parlayed that into playing Hercules in sword-and-sandal epics in the 1960s. Schwarzenegger later followed that path, meeting and befriending Park – whose son is among those interviewed – along the way.
Schwarzenegger’s rise included surviving an abusive father, whom he describes as a broken man after World War II, and throwing himself into bodybuilding, winning multiple Mr. Universe and Mr. Olympia titles.
Conquering acting came harder, but Schwarzenegger applied the same discipline to that sphere, from his role in “Conan the Barbarian” to “The Terminator,” which – as director James Cameron notes – was initially supposed to feature him as the hero opposite O.J. Simpson.
The real genius move career-wise, though, may have come when Schwarzenegger augmented his action niche by branching into comedies like “Twins,” “Junior” and “Kindergarten Cop,” cementing his status as a box-office draw before his turn into politics, and the related revelations about on-set groping of women for which he eventually apologized.
Schwarzenegger admits he’s uncomfortable discussing his “failures,” as he puts it, among them the fact that he fathered a child with a household employee during his marriage to Maria Shriver. There’s also emotion surrounding his brother, Meinhard, who died in a 1971 car crash, with Schwarzenegger not returning home for his funeral or that of his father.
As for his run for governor in California’s 2003 recall election, Jay Leno remembers being genuinely surprised and perplexed when the actor officially announced his candidacy on “The Tonight Show,” thinking of his broadly popular guest taking the risky leap into politics, “What are you doing?”
Although his ability to weather scandal – and blame the media for covering it – seemingly foreshadowed Donald Trump’s presidential campaign, Schwarzenegger became a different kind of Republican in California, advocating for action on climate change and, after a rocky start, finding areas of common ground with Democrats.
Referring to his elder-statesman status now, former chief of staff Susan Kennedy says of the place the 75-year-old Schwarzenegger has come to occupy in speaking out about issues like the climate crisis and public health during Covid, “The world needs him.”
Hardly known for a lack of ego, Schwarzenegger nevertheless balks at the description of him as a “self-made” man, citing all the people who helped him at various stages of his career.
However Schwarzenegger got there, “Arnold” reminds us of his often-surprising and mostly charmed life, failures and all. And while one is tempted to say, “He’ll be back,” the truth is that when it comes to fame, Schwarzenegger hasn’t left the stage, in one field or another, since he first muscled onto it.
“Arnold” premieres June 7 on Netflix.
India's envoy to Canada insists relations between the two countries are positive overall, despite what he describes as 'a lot of noise.'
With Donald Trump sitting just feet away, Stormy Daniels testified Tuesday at the former president's hush money trial about a sexual encounter the porn actor says they had in 2006 that resulted in her being paid to keep silent during the presidential race 10 years later.
The U.S. paused a shipment of bombs to Israel last week over concerns that Israel was approaching a decision on launching a full-scale assault on the southern Gaza city of Rafah against the wishes of the U.S.
Footage from dozens of security cameras in the area of Drake’s Bridle Path mansion could be the key to identifying the suspect responsible for shooting and seriously injuring a security guard outside the rapper’s sprawling home early Tuesday morning, a former Toronto homicide detective says.
A chicken farmer near Mattawa made an 'eggstraordinary' find Friday morning when she discovered one of her hens laid an egg close to three times the size of an average large chicken egg.
Susan Buckner, best known for playing peppy Rydell High School cheerleader Patty Simcox in the 1978 classic movie musical 'Grease,' has died. She was 72.
Accused killer Jeremy Skibicki could have a challenging time convincing a judge that he is not criminally responsible for the deaths of four Indigenous women, a legal analyst says.
A Calgary bylaw requiring businesses to charge a minimum bag fee and only provide single-use items when requested has officially been tossed.
Two Nova Scotia men are dead after a boat they were travelling in sank in the Annapolis River in Granville Centre, N.S., on Monday.
An Ontario man says he paid more than $7,700 for a luxury villa he found on a popular travel website -- but the listing was fake.
Whether passionate about Poirot or hungry for Holmes, Winnipeg mystery obsessives have had a local haunt for over 30 years in which to search out their latest page-turners.
Eighty-two-year-old Susan Neufeldt and 90-year-old Ulrich Richter are no spring chickens, but their love blossomed over the weekend with their wedding at Pine View Manor just outside of Rosthern.
Alberta Ballet's double-bill production of 'Der Wolf' and 'The Rite of Spring' marks not only its final show of the season, but the last production for twin sisters Alexandra and Jennifer Gibson.
A mother goose and her goslings caused a bit of a traffic jam on a busy stretch of the Trans-Canada Highway near Vancouver Saturday.
A British Columbia mayor has been censured by city council – stripping him of his travel and lobbying budgets and removing him from city committees – for allegedly distributing a book that questions the history of Indigenous residential schools in Canada.
Three men in Quebec from the same family have fathered more than 600 children.
A group of SaskPower workers recently received special recognition at the legislature – for their efforts in repairing one of Saskatchewan's largest power plants after it was knocked offline for months following a serious flood last summer.
A police officer on Montreal's South Shore anonymously donated a kidney that wound up drastically changing the life of a schoolteacher living on dialysis.