The 70-year-old actor turned activist — famous for the catchphrase “I’ll be back” — was in a Los Angeles hospital Thursday to have a valve replaced and developed complications, according to his spokesman Daniel Ketchell.

Doctors rushed the “Terminator” and “Predator” star into theater for open-heart surgery, operating for several hours, according to reports in the US entertainment press.

Schwarzenegger, a former Mr Universe, underwent non-urgent heart surgery 21 years ago to have the valve replaced, due to a condition he said was congenital and nothing to do with steroids.

“That 1997 replacement valve was never meant to be permanent, and has outlived its life expectancy, so he chose to replace it yesterday through a less-invasive catheter valve replacement,” Ketchell said.

“During that procedure, an open-heart surgery team was prepared, as they frequently are in these circumstances, in case the catheter procedure was unable to be performed.

“Governor Schwarzenegger’s pulmonic valve was successfully replaced and he is currently recovering from the surgery and is in stable condition.”

Schwarzenegger revealed in his book “Total Recall: My Unbelievably True Life Story” that he initially kept that first operation a secret from his wife, Maria Shriver, by telling her he was on vacation in Mexico.

In an interview with CBS’s “60 Minutes” he said his doctor told him he was “crazy” when he said he planned to keep the operation quiet from Shriver.

– Iconic line –

“He said ‘your wife is pregnant, what do you mean you are not going to tell her?'” Schwarzenegger recalled.

“I told him: ‘Here is the plan, I am going to have the heart surgery, you do it quietly, no one knows about it, we do it at six in the morning. Four days later I am out of here and I go to Mexico and I will tell Maria I am down here, a little busy and I am on vacation, when I come back I’ll be tanned and no one will know.'”

The Austrian-born former bodybuilder was voted in as governor of California in a historic 2003 recall vote — but proved the win was no fluke by routing opponent Phil Angelides to get re-elected.

Cedars-Sinai hospital refused to confirm Schwarzenegger’s treatment, citing privacy laws, but his spokesman publicly thanked the medical team for their “tireless efforts.”

Ketchell confirmed that Schwarzenegger’s first words when he woke up after surgery were, “I’m back,” a play on his trademark film line.

He first used it in 1984’s “The Terminator” and over the next 34 years repeated the phrase – or close variations — in the sequels, as well as “Commando,” “Raw Deal,” “The Running Man,” “Twins,” “Total Recall,” “Kindergarten Cop,” “Last Action Hero,” “Jingle All the Way,” “The 6th Day” and “The Expendables II.”

He revealed years later that he’d had difficulty pronouncing “I’ll” and tried, unsuccessfully, to persuade “Terminator” director James Cameron to change the line to “I will be back.”

In 2005 it was ranked 37 on the American Film Institute’s “100 Years… 100 Movie Quotes” list celebrating iconic lines from the history of cinema.

Film tourism is a modern trend. Around the world, many are jetting off to see in person the locations that captured their hearts on film.

The sprawling city of King’s Landing in HBO’s hit series “Game of Thrones” have brought tourists flocking to Croatia’s Dubrovnik in recent years – so many, in fact, that it aided the country’s recovery from a recession, according to Quartz. At the other end of the world, tourists are still making stops at Hobbiton over a decade after the enormously popular Lord of The Rings trilogy hit the big screen.

Asia, too, has experienced its share of movie-inspired tourism – and countries have been cashing in.

Here are three well-known films that have helped boost tourism in Asia.

Eat, Pray, Love

With its picturesque rice paddies and gorgeous beaches, Indonesia’s island of Bali served as the final destination in divorcee Elizabeth Gilbert’s journey of self-discovery in the 2010 film “Eat Pray Love”, based on the memoir of the same name.

As a result of the book and film, scores of tourists have made their way to Bali to retrace Gilbert’s steps, helping tourism on the island to recover after a long dark spell following the 2002 Bali bombings, according to the Associated Press. At one point, resorts and spas even offered “Eat, Pray, Love” packages and tours, which included activities like yoga classes, massage therapy and excursions to locations featured in the film, Time reported.

Indonesia was not the only country with specially created Eat, Pray, Love tours. Tour operators also created packages to India, the second of the three countries visited by Gilbert, in the hope that the film would give tourism a boost.

Lara Croft: Tomb Raider

Starring Angelina Jolie as Lara Croft, parts of this action-packed film based on the tomb raider video games series was shot in Cambodia’s ancient Angkor Wat temple complex in Siem Reap. Among the temples to appear in the film was the mysterious Ta Prohm temple, known for the tree roots enveloping parts of the structure.

The film was the first Hollywood production to be shot in Cambodia since Lord Jim in 1964, and it was suggested that it could boost tourism, especially after the moderately successful film “The Beach” drew crowds to Thailand’s Phi Phi Leh island, The Guardian reported.

Angkor Wat is the country’s biggest tourist attraction, with nearly 2.5 million people visiting the site over the course of 2017, The Phnom Penh Post, citing an Angkor Enterprise statement, reported.

Though it is hard to assess the exact extent to which the film contributed to the location’s popularity, Ta Prohm temple is still commonly referred to as the “tomb raider” temple.

Kong: Skull Island

The latest adaptation of this classic monster movie made its way back to the big screen last year. Packed full of action and adventure, parts of Kong: Skull Island were filmed in Vietnam.

Though the country has been featured in Hollywood films in the past, Kong: Skull Island was the largest film production the country had hosted before, according to Channel News Asia.

Prior to the film’s release last year, Vogt-Roberts said that he was hopeful that the film would encourage more people to visit Vietnam, Channel News Asia reported.

According to the Vietnam Economic Times, both local and international tour companies were quick to use the film as a marketing tool, putting together special tours for those wishing to take a closer look at some of the spectacular scenery featured in the film.

ONCE PROCLAIMED “the most beautiful woman in the world,” Hedy Lamarr is remembered as the silver screen siren who scandalised show business in a 1930s nude scene.

The raven-haired actress, who died at the turn of the millennium at age 86, wrote in her memoirs that “any girl can be glamorous: all you have to do is stand still and look stupid”.

In reality, as a new PBS documentary reveals, Lamarr’s sultry beauty stood in the way of her getting the credit she deserved as an ingenious scientist and engineer whose inventions helped revolutionise modern communications.

Lamarr never publicly talked about her life outside the movies, and her family thought her story had died with her, but in 2016, never-before-heard tapes of the actress telling her own life story emerged.

Producer Adam Haggis, Susan Sarandon and author Doron Weber attend the premiere of “Bombshell: The Hedy Lamarr Story” during 2017 Tribeca Film Festival at Cinepolis Chelsea in New York./AFP

“People have the idea that I’m sort of a stupid thing. I never knew I looked good to begin with, because my mother wanted a boy named Georg,” she says on one of the tapes.

“Unfortunately I didn’t become that and she wasn’t too thrilled about it. I was different, I guess. Maybe I came from a different planet, who knows? But whatever it is, inventions are easy for me to do.”

Combining the recordings with intimate reflections from her children, closest friends, family and admirers, “Bombshell: The Hedy Lamarr Story” explores Lamarr’s true legacy as a technological trailblazer.

The film, co-executive produced by Oscar winner Susan Sarandon, attempts to shine a light on the atmosphere that created the disconnect between her brilliance and beauty.

An Austrian Jewish emigrant who invented a covert communications system to try to help defeat the Nazis, Lamarr was ignored and told to sell kisses for war bonds instead.

It was only toward the end of her life that tech pioneers discovered that it was her concept that is now used as the basis for secure WiFi, GPS and Bluetooth technologies.

In 2016, former Forbes journalist Fleming Meeks discovered several tapes of a 1990 phone interview with Lamarr, providing a rare insight into her private thoughts.

“Oh my God, she was the best-looking movie star that ever lived. She became my inspiration,” veteran filmmaker Mel Brooks says in the documentary.

“I don’t know whether it’s true, but you hear things. I heard that she was a scientist.”

Born in Vienna in 1913, Lamarr was an intuitive tinkerer as a child, always interested in mechanical things and an inveterate seeker of knowledge.

She won a few minor roles when, still going by her real name Edy Kiesler, she made a fleeting appearance without her clothes in the Czech film “Extase”.

Pope Pius XI denounced the movie, Hitler banned it, and the offending scenes were excised from most European and American versions.

She married millionaire arms manufacturer Fritz Mandl, entertaining top businessmen and politicians including Mussolini and Hitler, but grew tired of life as a trophy wife and fled to Hollywood.

Meaty roles eluded the actress – although she famously turned down Ingrid Bergman’s role in “Casablanca” – and she became increasingly typecast as the sultry temptress in such movies as “Algiers” (1938) and “Lady of the Tropics” (1940).

In 1941, Lamarr and an avant-garde composer, George Antheil, filed a patent based on “frequency-hopping”, in which a radio transmitter and its receiver jump from one frequency to another to prevent their signal being intercepted.

Their gadget was aimed at developing radio-controlled torpedoes for the US Navy that could not be jammed by German warships.

But the idea was so far ahead of its time that the Navy didn’t grasp its importance and it took years to reach fruition.

Today, frequency-hopping is the basis for quick and secure communications in espionage, the military, mobile phones and the internet. But Lamarr never gained a penny for her stroke of inventive genius.

“In a different era, she might very well have become a scientist. At the very least, it was an option that was derailed by her beauty,” says film historian Jeanine Basinger.

Lamarr had faded from fashion by the time Cecil B de Mille chose her to play the most famous femme fatale of all in “Samson and Delilah” (1949), the biggest box office hit of her career.

She was seen as difficult to work with, however, and the upturn in her fortunes fell away as quickly as it had begun.

An attempt to revive her career, and her ailing bank balance, with a 1966 autobiography largely failed.

Along the way, Lamarr was acquiring and losing husbands – she had a total of six – and by the late 1950s could count more divorces than film roles.

In 1997, she finally received an honour as an inventor: a prize from the US Electronic Frontier Foundation for her pioneering contribution to society.

But the work had long since dried up and Lamarr remained unmarried for the last 35 years of her life, shunning family living as a lonely recluse before succumbing to heart failure in January 2000.

“They think I’m a bad actress. I think sometimes in life I act more than on the screen,” she says.

 The HBO original film “Paterno” starring Al Pacino premieres on April 8. It premieres at the same time as in the United States, at 8am, with a same-day encore at 9pm, again exclusively on HBO.

The series will also be streaming on HBO Go via AIS Play and AIS Playbox.

Starring Oscar winner Al Pacino in the title role, the drama centres on Pennsylvania’s Joe Paterno in the aftermath of the Jerry Sandusky sexual abuse scandal.

Paterno is an American college football player, athletic director and coach. He was the head coach of the Penn State Nittany Lions from 1966 to 2011.

After becoming the most successful coach in college football history, Paterno’s legacy is challenged and he is forced to face questions of institutional failure in regard to the victims.

Barry Levinson (“Rain Man”) directs from a script by Debora Cahn (“Grey’s Anatomy”, “Vinyl”) and John C Richards (“Sahara”). The film also stars Riley Keough (“Mad Max: Fury Road”), Kathy Baker, Greg Grunberg, Annie Parisse and Larry Mitchell (“Brawl in Cell Block 99”).

With a library of 800-plus movies, a cult following and a record for giving stars their break, Lloyd Kaufman could be the biggest movie mogul you’ve never heard of.

For half a century, the 72-year-old co-founder of Troma Entertainment – the world’s oldest independent film studio – has been the enfant terrible of comedy horror, a low-budget Abbott and Costello for the grossout crowd.

Troma’s iconic B-movie back catalogue includes such squelchy, sanguinary delights as “The Toxic Avenger”, “Surf Nazis Must Die”, “Poultrygeist: Night of the Chicken Dead” and “Tromeo and Juliet”.

The movies – mainly shown these days in art house theatres and on college campuses – haven’t made money since the 1990s but Troma’s mutants have become icons of American schlock culture.

“Troma has left a big mark on the countryside of the moving images industry. But we are not that well-known,” laments Kaufman, who describes the studio he founded with university friend Michael Herz as “jalapeno peppers on the cultural pizza”.

Troma was a stepping stone to Oscars glory for Oliver Stone and Kevin Costner as well as a filmmaking hothouse for James Gunn (“Guardians of the Galaxy Vol 1 and 2”) and Trey Parker and Matt Stone (“South Park”, “Team America”).

Other luminaries whose early work can be found in Troma’s library of self-produced and acquired movies include Robert De Niro, Dustin Hoffman, Vincent D’Onofrio, Samuel L Jackson and Eli Roth.

Not for the thin-skinned or politically correct, the filmography is a Pandora’s box of cannibalism, radioactive goo, bodily fluids and pneumatic breasts, not to mention relentlessly mocked racial, religious and sexual stereotypes.

AFP caught up with Kaufman at his oceanside hotel as he visited Los Angeles for the west coast premiere of his latest opus “Return to Return to Nuke ’Em High: AKA Vol 2”.

The second part of an $800,000 revisiting of Troma’s 1986 classic “Class of Nuke ’Em High,” it deals with environmental degradation, bullying, anti-LGBTQ prejudice and school shootings, all in the inimitable Troma style.

The movie reunites fans with Tromaville High School classmates and lovers Chrissy and Lauren, who battle fellow students who have turned into vicious mutants after eating contaminated tacos as part of a corrupt school meals programme.

“Poultrygeist,” a satire of the chemical-industrial food complex, focuses on a fast food restaurant built on a native American burial ground that sparks a disco-dancing chicken-human hybrid zombie apocalypse.

“The Toxic Avenger,” considered by most to be Kaufman’s finest work, stars 40-kilogram weakling Melvin Junko, who falls into a vat of chemical waste and emerges as Toxie, New Jersey’s first superhero.

Pretty much ignored upon its release in 1984, it eventually proved to be Troma’s breakthrough into the mainstream consciousness, celebrated by arthouse types from Greenwich Village to Tokyo.

It has spawned three sequels, a stage musical, a Marvel comic, video game and a children’s cartoon series, and is due to be inducted into the US Library of Congress this year.

“The people in Tromaville are… perfectly capable of running their own lives but they suffer,” Kaufman says.

“They are victims of a conspiracy of the labour elite – labour leaders who make millions of dollars while the constituency is eating dog food.”

To say Kaufman is outspoken would be to undersludge the radioactive pudding. A twinkle in his eye, he enjoys pulling the rug from under establishment figures he considers pompous or corrupt.

The Troma hashtag for the ballet dresswearing Toxie – #MeTutu  is a provocative nod to the entirely serious #MeToo movement against sexual harassment that is likely to offend as much as it amuses.

But the free-speech advocate has sincerely held beliefs about the way Hollywood – that “small number of devil-worshipping international media conglomerates” – runs things.

“Ninety-nine point nine percent of the people in the movie industry are just scum of the earth – stupid, incompetent, dishonest, the worst,” he says.

His evidence of the “filthy” showbiz culture, he says, is the sycophantic embrace of disgraced movie tycoon Harvey Weinstein while he was sexually abusing with impunity.

Paradoxically, he refers to the reaction to the scandal variously as “The OxBow Incident” – a 1943 movie about the injustice of mob lynching – and the “Red Scare”, a reference to post-World War II paranoia over communism infiltrating US society.

“How many naked people have been in our films? Thousands. In fact I’ve been naked in my movies. The point is we’re like ‘Bambi’ compared to the way the scum of this mainstream is,” he says.

Kaufman reveals that his own stars audition naked but adds that his female casting agent or another witness is always in the room.

His daughter Charlotte, who has acted in many of his movies, was the director of photography on the latest and had to excuse herself while he pranced naked in a sendup of the notorious “Silence of the Lambs” Buffalo Bill scene.

It was Kaufman who gave childhood friend and fellow Yale student Oliver Stone his first movie job, producing the 1973 erotic crime story “Sugar Cookies”.

“I knew when we were in grade school that Oliver Stone would be great, either as something constructive great or an axe murderer,” he says.

“And it turns out he’s one of our most talented and, certainly in my lifetime, one of America’s greatest directors.”

Directed by Vangelis Seitanidis, the 2014 road movie tells the story of Cousteau and Rico, two friends who go on a long journey to reconnect with school-beauty Nadia, who they both chased in their youth and who, they hear, has joined a convent. This disturbs them and they decide to check it out for themselves.

The journey is also an opportunity for the two friends to discuss their personal angst, as well as the social angst in the country. Rico is a high-ranking civil servant with a wife and family who love him. But he has an eye for the girls and constantly cheats on his wife. Cousteau is a failed businessman who is going through a low phase.

The screening is supported by the Embassy of Greece, who will serve wine and snacks after the film. Greek ambassador HE Pericles Boutos will introduce the movie. The venue, as ever, is Room 201 on the second floor of River City Bangkok.

Book your seat by emailing rcbfilmclub@gmail.com or wathanya@rivercity.co.th or call (02) 237 00778, extensions 600/701.

The producers of hit Netflix royal saga “The Crown” apologised on Tuesday over the firestorm that erupted after it emerged that Claire Foy was paid less than costar Matt Smith.

But the statement stopped short of admitting that Foy had been treated unfairly, or of offering to redress the balance with a retrospective bonus for the actress, who plays Queen Elizabeth II in the British royal saga.

“We want to apologise to both Claire Foy and to Matt Smith, brilliant actors and friends, who have found themselves at the centre of a media storm this week through no fault of their own,” the statement from London-based Left Bank Pictures said.

The furore erupted last week when producers admitted that Smith, who plays the queen’s husband Prince Philip, negotiated a better deal than Foy because of his perceived higher profile.

They did not reveal either salary – Foy’s was put at $40,000 (Bt1.25 million) an episode by Variety last year – but told a panel event in Jerusalem that Smith’s 2010-2013 starring role on the BBC’s “Doctor Who” had been the decisive factor.

The explanation has not appeased critics who argued that the discrepancy should only have shown up in the first season, before Foy was garlanded with acclaim.

The part has earned the 33-year-old British actress a host of award season nominations, including at the BAFTAs, Golden Globes, Emmys and Screen Actors Guild awards. She has won two SAGs and a Globe.

An online petition even called on Smith to donate the difference accumulated over two years.

“As the producers of ‘The Crown’, we at Left Bank Pictures are responsible for budgets and salaries; the actors are not aware of who gets what, and cannot be held personally responsible for the pay of their colleagues.”

Suzanne Mackie, one of the show’s producers, said the discrepancy was being resolved for the third season but that will not benefit Foy.

“The Crown”, which costs $7 million an episode to produce, is replacing its leads for the start of filming in July, with Olivia Colman stepping in as the queen and an actor to replace Smith not yet announced.

“We understand and appreciate the conversation which is rightly being played out across society and we are absolutely united with the fight for fair pay, free of gender bias, and for a rebalancing of the industry’s treatment of women, both those in front of the camera and for those behind the scenes,” Left Bank said.

“We all have a responsibility to do what we can to ensure that these issues are tackled, and as a leading production company we want to make our contribution to the debate.”

The high-intensity series returned with a new cast for its 10-episode fifth season on February 3, showing at the same time as in the US at 10am with a same day encore at 9pm. New episodes debut every Saturday at the same time.

After the overwhelming success of the first four seasons, the series kicked off with fanatical terrorist Omair Idrisi escaping the Syrian authorities and planning to launch an unprecedented attack that could change the face of modern warfare. The ensuing manhunt could only be entrusted to counter-terrorism’s best and brightest. Enter Section 20 – the elite, multinational, covert special ops team tasked with tracking down Idrisi and his British co-conspirator wife, Jane Lowry. The main characters include Lance Corporal Gracie Novin (Alin Sumarwata), a crack shot and ready-for-anything gearhead who is looking to make the step up. Genuine and honest to the point of bluntness, she’s the heart and soul of the team.

Sergeant Samuel Wyatt (Daniel MacPherson) is best when working alone and has no intention of being dragged into a team situation. But what he wants and what he gets are rarely the same thing.

The series is also streaming on HBO GO via AIS Play and AIS PlayBox.

The well-known radio host Saithip “Chod” Montrikul Na Ayudhaya posted news of Anochao’s death along with a funeral timetable on Instragram.

The actor’s bathing rites were to be held at Wat Phrasri Mahathat in Bangkok’s Bang Khen district at 4pm on Wednesday, after which an Abhidramma rite would be performed through Sunday before his cremation on Monday.

Anochao, the youngest son of his parents’ eight children, suffered a serious head injury in a road accident sustained while filming the movie “Rakkan Wanlanid”, or “Love A Little Bit Each Day”, in Chiang Mai in 1983.

Anochao had been care for by his mother Ampai Yodbutr, who was honoured as one of the nation’s outstanding mothers in April 2002 and passed away in 2012 at the age of 88 from lung cancer.

His siblings, notably his sister Euamporn Yodbutr, continued to take care of Anochao in line with Ampai’s last words: “Don’t leave your brother.”

Anochao, born December 30, 1958, had performed in many Thai films released between 1982 and 1984 and received the best supporting actor award in 1982 for the film “Thep Thida Rong Ngan”.