Tom Arnold: 9 things you probably don’t know about the comedian

Tom Arnold is a successful comedian, actor and reality-show host.

Still, he might be best remembered for his brief marriage to and bitter split from Roseanne Barr in the early 1990s.

It’s a topic that will likely be addressed when Arnold, 55, brings his stand-up show to Kansas Star Casino’s Event Center on Friday.

“I think people know a little bit about me,” he said during a phone interview from his Los Angeles home last week. “I don’t have the luxury of just telling pop culture jokes. I talk a lot about the things that have happened in my life and things people probably know about.”

Here are nine facts about Arnold you probably didn’t know:

1. He’s done a lot since “Roseanne”: Since parting ways with his famous wife in 1994, Arnold has filled his resume with movie and television work as well as hosting gigs. Over the years, he’s had roles in movies including “True Lies” with Arnold Schwarzenegger, “Nine Months” with Hugh Grant and “Austin Powers: International Man of Mystery” with Mike Myers. He just finished filming an eight-episode original series for Yahoo called “Sin City Saints,” which costars Malin Akerman. It will premiere in March. Arnold also has performed several hosting jobs over the years for programs including Fox Sports Network’s “Best Damn Sports Show Period” and CMT’s “My Big Redneck” franchise.

2. He’s from the Midwest: Arnold was born and grew up in Ottumwa, Iowa, a small town about 85 miles southeast of Des Moines. He worked in a meat factory as a young man, then began working in comedy when he was a student at the University of Iowa. Arnold moved to Minneapolis, and in 1988 he won the Minneapolis Comedy Competition. That experience helped him land a job as a writer on Barr’s popular series “Roseanne,” where he met his future wife. In 1993, he won a Golden Globe as a writer and producer on the show.

3. Midwesterners aren’t sure what to make of him: The citizens of Arnold’s hometown seem to fear his redneck jokes are pointed at them, Arnold said, and frequently air their feelings about him online. “It’s funny because my hometown, I mention that a lot when I do interviews, and I also do these redneck shows on CMT. If there’s one person that doesn’t like to be called a redneck it’s a redneck,” he said. “Every once in a while, they put up a thing that says, ‘Well, Tom Arnold was on ‘The Meredith Vieira Show,’ and he said something about hillbillies and referenced Ottumwa. I never liked him. He never did anything for this town.’”

4. @TomArnold is into social media: Arnold is active on social media – sometimes in a controversial way. In 2013, he got into a highly publicized Twitter fight with Barr when he tweeted that he had cleaned out his garage and taken boxes, which included their wedding tape, to Goodwill. “I like Twitter,” he said. “People say nice things. And then once in a while, someone will be so mean and stupid, you just have to retweet it.”

5. He’s making a show about social media: Arnold says he’s working on a show for the cable station Reelz called “Say It to My Face,” in which celebrities go to the homes or workplaces of people who have bashed them on social media. Arnold said he was inspired partially by an incident in which he demanded that the creator of the website “Tom Arnold Is the Devil” take it down only to learn later that the creator was a social recluse who had nothing else going on in his life. “Sometimes you find out there’s something sad going on at the other end,” he said.

6. He’s a new father: Arnold became a father for the first time at age 53 when he and his wife, Ashley, welcomed Jax in April 2013. Now, Arnold said, traveling to do his standup shows is harder on him. “The worst thing is leaving him. But I go out for short bursts and come back.” On the other hand, Arnold admits, being away gives him an excuse to catch up on sleep that’s rare for parents of toddlers. “Sometimes, I’ll do a comedy club just so I can sleep on Saturday.”

7. He’s lost 100 pounds : Once Jax was born, Arnold realized he needed to lose weight if he wanted to be around. He weighed 287 pounds when he decided to change his lifestyle. He set a goal of losing 100 pounds, which he did with diet and exercise. And Arnold has kept the weight off for a year. “I was very fat and thought, ‘I’ve got to get in shape so I can wrestle with this kid,’” he said. “And it’s good for my mental health. I like to work out until I can feel nothing.”

8. He takes his standup shows seriously: Arnold says he’s always impressed by the fact that his audiences are made up of younger people and older people. (Though he recently realized, he said, that the older people are actually his age.) “It’s kind of an event. It’s like a big deal to me, and it’s a big deal no matter what’s going on in my life,” he said. “If I’ve been in 125 movies or all these shows, the only thing that matters is I have to entertain these folks for 70 minutes. They paid, and they drove and took the time to come see me. I’m going to do whatever it takes to make sure they leave there thinking they got more than their money’s worth.”

9. He likes to meet his fans after the show: Arnold will usually hang around after his set to greet fans, who always surprise him, he said. “Somebody might say, ‘Well, I liked this movie when I was a kid’ or ‘This thing happened to me that happened to you.’ Sometimes it’s personal. Sometimes it’s funny. But when it’s someone who is so genuinely a fan that they’re shaking, it shocks me.”

This story was originally published February 11, 2015 at 4:59 PM with the headline "Tom Arnold: 9 things you probably don’t know about the comedian."