California governor showing his age

SACRAMENTO, Jan. 26 (UPI) -- Time may be catching up to California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, who turns 60 in a few months and has reportedly appeared weary lately.

The Los Angeles Times said Friday that Schwarzenegger, a former action movie star, looked tired when he hobbled into a middle school event for the Governor's Council on Physical Fitness.

The governor broke his leg over the Christmas holiday while skiing. He has an artificial hip. He has undergone heart valve and shoulder surgery and swimsuit photos from a Maui vacation a few years ago showed the former bodybuilder "with a sagging chest, robust stomach and ashen chest hair," as the Times put it.

Marty Kaplan, director of the Norman Lear Center of the Annenberg School for Communication at the University of Southern California told the Times the governor may have become more "accessible and endearing to people" of late.

"There is a way in which the governor's previous perfection, though awesome, was always a little bit unapproachable and a little threatening maybe," Kaplan said, "and it's kind of reassuring for us regular folks and fellow boomers to see that he has the same mortal coil as the rest of us."