Schwarzenegger returns to the big screen

The actor has started shooting for The Last Stand.

LOS ANGELES:

Arnold Schwarzenegger is back on set as a small-town sheriff in his first starring role since stepping down as governor of California and admitting to fathering a child with the family maid.

Lionsgate studios said Schwarzenegger, 64, has begun work on the set of The Last Stand, directed by South Korean Jee-woon Kim, in which the actor will play his first starring role since 2003’s Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines. “Fantastic first day on the set of The Last Stand. Big thanks to the crew — keep up the great work,” the actor tweeted earlier this week.

Schwarzenegger, who stepped down in January after seven years as governor of California, will play a former Los Angeles cop who becomes a small town sheriff on the Mexican border, where he hunts a drug trafficker wanted by the FBI. The film is due to be released in 2013.

Delayed comeback

The former bodybuilder and film star put his Hollywood comeback plans on hold after admitting in May that he had fathered a child with his former housekeeper a decade earlier. His wife Maria Shriver filed for divorce soon after, citing “irreconcilable differences” with her husband, whom she met in 1977 and married in 1986.

Prior to the ‘love child’ revelations, Schwarzenegger had plans to return to show business with ideas for a “Governator” comic book and animated TV show in which an ex-governor turned superhero would fight crime and natural disasters in the pipeline.

Meanwhile, the actor will also star alongside fellow action stars Sylvester Stallone and Bruce Willis in The Expendables 2, set to come out next year. 

Published in The Express Tribune, October 20^th, 2011.