Now Casting: Celebrities With Issues
Each week, Hollywood Hustlers looks at a hot career pursuit that’s drawing everyone from their respective corners of Tinseltown to vie for the role. Got an idea for an upcoming “Now Casting” feature? Email tips to cashleelee@gmail.com.
Despite rumors that the magazine industry at large is shrinking, celebrities are gladly jumping onto the sinking ship and getting involved in the issues. Most recently, actor and former California governor Arnold Schwarzenegger will soon be spotted on the mastheads of American Media Inc. (AMI) publications as its Group Executive Editor. Drawing from his extensive bodybuilding career — including winning bodybuilding’s top contest, the Mr. Olympia, seven times — Schwarzenegger will be offering both strategic and creative input, as well as contributing monthly columns to Muscle & Fitness and Flex magazines and websites.
It’s actually nothing new for Schwarzenegger: he held this position before taking office in 2003 (“I’ll be back…” he probably said), and has also appeared on more than 60 AMI covers throughout the years.
“It was in these magazines that I found the spark that inspired me to start lifting weights, and eventually move to America and realize my dreams, and I’m proud to return as Executive Editor,” said Schwarzenegger in a statement. “Bodybuilding has always been part of my life, and I know Muscle & Fitness and Flex will continue to motivate others — as it did me — to lift weights and lead a healthy lifestyle, promote the sport of bodybuilding, and, as Joe used to say in every issue, ‘exceed themselves’.”
Though Schwarzenegger is one of the few to jump from entertainment to magazines in a permanent capacity with AMI, a handful of other publications gladly invite Hollywood to try the role on for size. Vanity Fair featured director Judd Apatow as guest editor of its first-ever Comedy issue last December, following U2 frontman Bono who edited the Africa issue in July 2007, and designer Tom Ford who edited the Hollywood Portfolio in March 2006. Marie Claire rewards winners of Lifetime’s fashion reality competition Project Runway All Stars with a guest editorship of the magazine for a year, which also regularly runs a style advice column from Project Runway’s mentor Tim Gunn. Interview puts stars in the hot seat to interview other stars, while The New Yorker publishes their essays.
Yet others prefer to play a magazinist onscreen instead, either with fabulous fear like Meryl Streep in The Devil Wears Prada, with unintended romance like Richard Gere in Runaway Bride, or with familial priorities like Owen Wilson in Marley & Me. Who particularly loves the position? I say Justin Timberlake, who played an art director for GQ in Friends With Benefits and will soon star in The Last Drop as a very thirsty New York Magazine restaurant critic.
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