Tom Arnold: a lovable loser and proud of it

SACRAMENTO, Calif. — Tom Arnold is not just a walking contradiction. He’s a sitting, standing, walking and talking contradiction.

He’s an award-winning television writer but is better known, in his words, as “the fat, white sidekick” — whether to Roseanne Barr (to whom he was married and for whom he wrote) or Arnold Schwarzenegger (his friend, with whom he co-starred in “True Lies”). He’s a screw-up who is so open about it that he’s likable in spite of himself.

“People know that I’ve been married, that I’ve failed many times at many things,” Arnold said recently in a telephone interview.

And still, through failed TV shows and bad movies (he has been in “65, three of them good,” he said), he perseveres.

And it’s all fodder for his stand-up comedy.

Sacramento documentarian and comedian Keith Lowell Jensen said: “I think Arnold is a brilliant writer, and when his ego is kept in check, he’s a good comic actor, as well.

“Beyond the train-wreck personal life and the lack of any social filters whatsoever, there is also a certain charm. The kind of charm that makes you forgive your drunk neighbor when you catch him (relieving himself) on your rose bushes. That charm and his deadly wit have kept him around … long after Roseanne was finished with him.”

As he prepared for a Thanksgiving wedding — his fourth — Arnold reflected on his peculiar version of fame.

“Dax (Shepard, “Old Dogs,” “Baby Mama,” who will be his best man) says, ‘There’s nothing like going out with you, Tom. People will come up and tell you the most intimate, embarrassing things and you’ll tell them (the same kind of stuff) right back.’

“It’s like I’m this guy who sits with them on their couch and they’ll laugh and punch you on the arm,” Arnold said.

That aspect is what Chicago Sun-Times writer John Jacobson picked up on when he wrote about Arnold as a member of the cast of Fox Sports Net’s talk show “The Best Damn Sports Show Period.” He wrote: “If you’re looking for high-minded talk … this isn’t the show for you. To enjoy (it), you must suspend your intelligence and good taste before turning on the TV. The show is locker-room humor at its best, or worst, depending on your point of view.”

“A lot of celebrities — and I think they’re very smart — don’t share a lot of their personal life,” Arnold said. “That’s probably why they’re big stars. There’s some mystery.

“People meet me and think ‘He’s just as average as I thought he was.’ It’s my fault. I’ve ‘shared’ too much.”

Arnold was born in Ottumwa, Iowa. After his mother left when he was 4, Arnold and his six brothers and sisters were raised by their father.

As a child, Arnold was molested by a teenage neighbor who originally had been hired by his mother to baby-sit him while she engaged in adulterous affairs. The abuse ended when he was 7, after he went to the abuser’s home with one of his father’s guns. (The gun was not fired.)

Arnold has talked about that, and about his drug and alcohol abuse — Barr and the attendant fame didn’t help — and talked plenty about his three failed marriages.

“To say that I’ve learned from my mistakes is both an understatement and a misstatement,” he said.

“I think I have selective memory. I try to remember just positive things. I want all the women to do well. The fact that they married me — what an honor. There are moments when I’m, like, ‘Why am I getting married (again)?’ For me, it’s the right thing to do.

“I was raised without a mother and my first three wives were raised without a father. Ashley (Groussman, his fiancee) — her parents have been married for 40-some years. She got to see a working marriage. I never had that.

“But she thinks I’ve got another shot. I tell her, ‘You should have had me when I was 30,’ and she says, ‘I was 11. That would have been weird.’ ”

So, at 50, Arnold is “going for my fourth ring. I’m past midlife, I know,” he said. “Forty is fine, 50 is … well, you have to be going for the Guinness Book of World Records not to be halfway to dead. I want to get it right once before I’m all the way there.

“I really do have an optimistic view of life.”

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