Beatty Takes on Schwarzenegger in Stars War

It is being billed as Conan the Barbarian versus Dick Tracy.

In the latest crack to appear in the wall of support for Arnold Schwarzenegger, the governor of California, one of his own has turned against him.

Warren Beatty, famed lothario, politico and thespian, has broken ranks with the polite silence many Hollywood Democrats have maintained on Mr Schwarzenegger to deliver a caustic speech attacking the bodybuilder and actor turned politician.

His speech at a graduation ceremony in Berkeley, the heart of Californian radicalism, has prompted a flurry of speculation: will Beatty run against Schwarzenegger in next year's gubernatorial election?

Beatty's words should speak for themselves: "I don't want to run for governor," he told his audience at the University of California. But he went on to say, "I'm an opponent of his muscle-bound conservatism with a longer experience in politics than he has ... I'd do one helluva lot better job than he's done."

By midweek, Beatty was sounding less committed to the notion of not running for governor of the state with the largest population in America and the fifth-largest economy in the world. "One never knows at what point one becomes sufficiently inflamed to take a step that one does not basically want to take," he told reporters.

The Schwarzenegger camp attempted to defuse the challenge, first with humour and then with scorn.

"Warren is just mad at Republicans because he is afraid they're going to cut off his social security," said a spokesman. Another referred to Beatty as a "crackpot".

Declaring, "We are not the governor's dumbbells", Beatty used the speech to attack Mr Schwarzenegger for playing cheap politics, for his rightwing agenda and for cloaking himself in the aura of the Kennedys. Mr Schwarzenegger's wife, Maria Shriver, is a niece of JF Kennedy.

He attacked Mr Schwarzenegger for trivialising politics: "Can't we accept that devotion to the building of the body politic is more complex and a little more sensitive than devotion to body building? Does that make me a 'girly man'? ... Cut down on the photo-ops, the fake events, the fake issues, the fake crowds," he urged the governor.

Beatty, who has never run for political office, has been a prominent Democrat for many years, although he kept a low-profile in last year's presidential election, sensing that the Republican party had successfully demonised "Hollywood liberals".

His political convictions have spilled over into his film career. He directed and starred in Reds, the stirring film version of Ten Days that Shook the World, an eyewitness account of the Russian Revolution.

But his most notable foray into on-screen politics was his 1998 film Bulworth, which saw him play a political candidate who starts telling people the truth.

Should this be the blueprint for a future run for office by Beatty, he may want to drop the most innovative part of Bulworth's strategy: his unexpected ability to rap.