By Rob. Walton

Twitchy, pudgy, blue collar comic Tom Arnold stole the show from pumped-up Arnold Schwarzenegger in True Lies and debonair Hugh Grant in Nine Months. He helped revolutionize sports TV co-hosting The Best Damn Sports Show Period. Now, his dramatic turn as a vulnerable fortysomething single dad who falls in love with his son's twentysomething girlfriend in Happy Endings is about to put him in the big leagues. (That he got to have hot and heavy sex on film with Maggie Gyllenhaal was another perk.) Roseanne's ex, remarried and reinvented, talks to Playboy.com about his A-game, Iowa farmgirls and how it went in the sack with Gyllenhaal.

1. Like many of the jocks you interviewed on Best Damn Sports Show, do you abstain from sex for 24 hours before going to work?

Tom Arnold: I don't abstain. I'm married, so it's not really my choice when it happens. I put in requests, a lot.

2. Now that you're married, do you plan on making little Tom Arnolds?

Arnold: Yeah. It's what I want more than anything. In fact, Angelina Jolie and I are going to Africa next week. That's just a rumor, but anyway--

3. In Happy Endings, you play a widower having a relationship with a girl half his age. In real life, you recently married a sexy, skinny blonde in her late 20s. Do the similarities end there?

Arnold: My character's in his 40s and he dates these younger women and he buys them stuff. He's the guy who will pay their bills after they break up even if they dumped him. I read the script with my wife, and I said, "It's weird because the director [Don Roos] said this was how he sees me." And she goes, "Well, remember our first date when I was 27 and you took me to Gucci and you were still paying your second wife's parking tickets after your settlement?" So there are common characteristics.

4. So when it comes to women, what's your A-game?

Arnold: Say, when you're 12, you can throw a baseball, or a rock, really far. You think that's what will impress the girls. In your 40s, you have a little bit of money, and these young women, they don't. Of course you're going to buy them stuff. You should. Maybe not on your first date. Hopefully they'll like you because you're a great person later. We always bring our A-game to make a great first impression.

5. Ever buy anything for yourself, to help your A-game?

Arnold: Guys like me, you've got to get set up with the essentials. One really nice watch and some clothes, and you're ready to rock.

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Photo: Carlo Allegri/Getty Images