The Italian mega-hunk who lent his physique to more than 2,000 romance novels has a new hobby, an energy drink, and a few important things to get off his impressively chiseled chest

It has been about 10 years since Fabio Lanzoni, now 48, posed for the cover of a romance novel. His hair is still long and flowing; his pecs still resemble a pair of perfectly bronzed cinder blocks. But he's older now, a bit wrinkled—no longer the caricature we knew, or thought we knew. It seems the man who was, arguably, the greatest sex symbol since the V-2 rocket is ready for his second act—not just as an empty vessel for the fantasies of flyover state housewives or a tireless pitchman for everything from Miller Lite, Cheerios, and the Gillette Oral-B Sensitive Toothbrush to Versace's fragrance Mediterraneum, but also as a producer of content in his own right.

Not that he hasn't tried before. In the mid-'90s, Fabio launched a fitness quarterly, Fabio's Healthy Bodies Magazine, and published a book, Fabio Fitness. In 2003, he introduced his own signature line of women's outerwear in conjunction with Sam's Club. There was an inspirational phone line; various movie cameos, including a memorable walk-on in Zoolander; and the little-known album Fabio After Dark, a recording of his favorite love songs.

"In the past two decades, [Fabio] has appeared on more than 2,000 romance novel covers; it is estimated that some 100 million books have carried his image"

Fabio's latest projects include an energy drink, a charity motorcycle rally, and a reality show involving Grand Prix motorcycling, his greatest passion. So far, he says, two networks have expressed interest in the series. "I have a business mind," he explains. "I come from a business family. My father was the second man in the world to build conveyor belts. I love business, and I love people."

But one gets the sense there's more to all this frenetic activity than that. What Fabio seems to want, after decades of being seen but seldom heard—a slab of beefcake and late-night punchline—is to be taken seriously.

When I first meet him in the summer of 2006, on the occasion of his passing the torch as official non-butter spread spokes-hunk—he juiced annual sales of I Can't Believe It's Not Butter! from around $25 million to $250 million—he's in a voluble mood. Finally unshackled from his major sponsorship obligations, he's eager to show that he has more on his mind than the ripping of bodices—or, for that matter, the metaphysics of butter.

"The Israeli people have been the sacrificial lamb of history," Fabio declares. It's mid-August, and the bombs are dropping in Lebanon as we stand in the kitchen of his sprawling Spanish-style mansion in Los Angeles (his publicist asked that we keep the neighborhood a secret to deter stalkers). The so-called Harlequin heartthrob, a diehard news junkie, has had a lot on his mind lately, particularly when it comes to Middle East policy and the Iraq war.

"It's about fucking time," he says, as Fox News reports on Israel's attempt to push Hezbollah out of Southern Lebanon. "[The Jews] have been getting killed for 5,000 years. Enough is enough. The rest of the world does not give a shit, except America, because the Israelis have no oil. Everyone sticks with those Arabs—because they have the oil."

Oil is a big issue for Fabio. Despite being an avid dirt-bike aficionado, he'd like to see America wean itself off fossil fuels. "We should fucking get alternative energy and tell all the Arabs and the rest of the world to stick it up their ass," he says. "Fuck them and the oil!"

In the meantime, though, he's hard at work organizing a charity bike rally up the California coast for the families of soldiers injured in Iraq. He's calling it "Ride for the Heroes."

Fabio has roughly 180 Yamahas, Kawasakis, and Ducatis parked in the front yard of his house. There is also a Dodge Ram pickup and a rusting Bentley.

To encounter such a renowned icon of virile masculinity can wreak havoc on a man's self-esteem, and as Fabio shows off his collection, I find myself exaggerating my interest in—and ability to drive—the machines. Earlier, when he'd suggested a ride in the foothills, I'd eagerly assented, despite never having been on a motorcycle before.

"Come on! Don't release the clutch so quickly," Fabio yells from a hundred or so yards down the road, as my engine chokes for the sixth time. "Have you ever ridden a bike in your life?!"

"I guess it's been awhile," I mumble, inducing him to give me a quick "refresher." Finally, I get the hang of shifting gears, and we make our way to the hills where he routinely goes on wheelie-popping, trail-blazing excursions.

On our way over, a Jeep Cherokee filled with girls who either live in the neighborhood or simply know an international sex symbol in a helmet when they see one, drive by and scream his name.

For Fabio, motocross is part adrenaline rush, part exercise, and part therapy—it makes him feel like a "free spirit." Growing up in Milan, the son of a wealthy factory owner who bought his son a new sports car on a yearly basis, he developed a need for speed.

"We should fucking get alternative energy and tell all the Arabs and the rest of the world to stick it up their ass," Fabio says. "Fuck them and the oil!"

Aside from his ability to zoom up a nearly vertical precipice—a feat he demonstrates numerous times—what's most striking about our time on the trails is his patience and genuine good nature. Each time I wipe out in a bush, and there are many, he instantly appears—usually by way of a flamboyant skid—and talks me back up. "Come on, Spencer! You can do it!" On a typical afternoon, Fabio spends up to four hours riding around his neighborhood. But after two long hours, he takes pity on me and agrees to head home.

Back at the house, I pour two glasses of water, and scrutinize the contents of his fridge: lots of I Can't Believe It's Not Butter!, some eggs, soy milk, OJ, and an astounding array of vitamins and protein powders.

Photographs by Catherine Ledner

Except for his trail rides, Fabio leads a quiet existence these days. His enormous house is modestly decorated, save for an abundance of large crystals and slabs of agate. He recently scored around $20,000 worth of specimens in Brazil for the bargain price of $8,000. Most days, he rolls out of bed around 11, makes himself breakfast—typically a five-egg-white omelet with mushrooms and spinach. He feeds his five Rottweilers and spends some time playing with them. Then it's lunch with friends, followed by the gym or some motocross. In the evening, dinner, again with friends. "I like life to be very simple," he says. If he needs to run errands, he runs them. When a woman approaches him for a picture (which happens a dozen or so times whenever he leaves the house) he poses. "No big deal," he says. "I like to pose for pictures. I like to make people happy. I don't understand these celebrities who make a big deal out of it. It's like, excuse me, if you don't like it, go do something else."

Fabio is looking a bit like a cartoon right now, his giant body crammed into a tiny folding chair; he's drenched in sweat, with an untucked neon motorcycle jersey clinging to his 6-foot-3-inch, 220-pound frame. Conversation soon circles back to the Middle East—this time, Iraq.

"[Fabio] is so damn friendly, even when calling for mass carnage, that I find myself nodding along with him"

"I'll tell you my policy," he says confidently. "Invading Iraq was a total fuck-up because you have Muslims—Shi'ite, Sunni, and Kurds—who hate and would like to kill each other to the end of time. Listen, it took a bastard like Saddam Hussein, because he was a fanatic, killing hundreds of thousands, to keep those people quiet. We get there and are like, 'Oh!' Now what you've got is a civil war and we're stuck in the middle. It's like when you step on a nest of rattlesnakes. What are you gonna do? Of course, if we have to go to war with Iran, we are right there. That's the only good side."

He's also critical of how the war has been waged. "We went in too fast," he says. "To me, shock and awe should not be a light touch. Where's the shock, you know?" The model, who served the once-mandatory 18 months in the Italian military after high school, nods a lot when he speaks. He's so damn friendly, even when calling for mass carnage, that I find myself nodding along with him.

"Bomb them for a few years," he suggests, "And when they start coming out with the white flag ... bomb them a little bit more. Then you go in with our soldiers."

"Let me give you an example in life," he says, by which he means a example in fantasy. Fabio is big on outrageous hypotheticals. "You can't go into the ring with Mike Tyson and say, 'You know, Mike, you can't punch me in the face because I have a pretty face, okay? And of course you can't punch me under the belt, and not too hard.' He wants to rip you apart! He wants to bite your ear off, he wants to kill you. You see, it's war. This is what people don't understand."

"Think about it," he goes on. "On one hand, they show Abu Ghraib and Americans are like, 'What's the world coming to?' On the other hand, they chop off your head on TV. And you know, they're watching us and laughing. Because to them we are pussies. It's like they look at us and they're like, 'Oh, look at those wimpy little pussies.'"

Politically, Fabio is not a Democrat, but neither is he a Republican. He says he isn't interested in running for office because he's not a fan of compromise. Then again, he's not a U.S. citizen anyway, so any party operatives hoping to launch the new Schwarzenegger can keep dreaming.

Even so, Fabio has a deep respect for the United States, which he credits with helping him achieve his incredible success. He has traveled the world, and says he has no doubt that America is by far the best country out there. His Ride for the Heroes, as he envisions it—20,000 or so motorcyclists cruising the Pacific Coast Highway from L.A. to San Francisco or thereabouts, each rider raising a certain amount of money—is his way of giving back to the nation and to the families of injured and fallen troops.

"They are the true heroes—not the people in Hollywood," Fabio says. "I guarantee the majority of stars, they hear a gunshot, they'd be the first one under a car."

But so far, organizing the ride has been frustrating. The charities he's tried to partner with—and he's talked to dozens—all demand a big cut to participate. "One charity requested $2.5 million, just for expenses," he recalls. "I said, 'Excuse me?' With the majority of the charities, 85 percent goes to the charity, 15 percent to the cause. It should be the other way around!"

"Before Fabio, it was the woman who was featured on the cover, with the man in the background. "They discovered that every time they put me on the cover, the sales would go up," he recalls proudly.

Still, sincere as his motives may be, it's hard not to think the ride might benefit Fabio as well, by offering a way for him to prove to the world that he's more than just a beefcake. He wouldn't be the first model to make a bid for respect. Fabio insists that the secret to his success has been "not taking myself seriously" and to "just enjoy life." But his relentless ambition tells a different story. In 1982, less than three days off the boat, Fabio signed with the Ford Modeling Agency. A day later, he snagged a Gap campaign with Kathy Ireland and Andie MacDowell. The modeling jobs kept pouring in, including numerous ads for designer Andrew Marc. His first romance novel cover was, for Fabio, just another $150-an-hour gig. In fact, he says, it wasn't until one night in 1987, when two women spotted him in a Miami club and presented him with copies of their books, that he even realized what the pictures were being used for.

"I had no idea," he says. Soon enough, Fabio was doing up to 15 book-cover shoots a day. It can fairly be said that he changed the face of the romance novel. Before Fabio, it was the woman who was featured on the cover, with the man in the background. "They discovered that every time they put me on the cover, the sales would go up, sometimes by 60 percent," he recalls proudly. "All of a sudden they just started featuring me on the cover without the girl. And I was kind of bummed. I was like, where's the girl?"

By then Fabio wasn't just a cover model, he was a veritable legend. In the past two decades, he has appeared on more than 2,000 romance novel covers; it is estimated that some 100 million books have carried his image. In 1993, he made a critical decision: He would no longer appear on a book unless he wrote it. Negotiating six-figure advances, the first-time author published seven romances under his own name. The first was titled Pirate.

"The beauty about this country, you come out with ideas and you have a ghostwriter," he says. "Every single celebrity, they have ghostwriter. That's the beauty about America."

Not surprisingly, Fabio is often asked for relationship advice, and he is happy to share his wisdom. In his own life, he says, there was one great love. They met when he was living in New York. Fabio was young then. He was immature. He didn't realize what he had.

"If you have many rotten apples before, when you find a good one, it's like, 'Oh, my God, this is a really good apple,' and you're going to hold on," he says, explaining how he let his soul mate slip away. "It's the worst when you really have a great apple, but you didn't know what a rotten apple was like, so you think that all the rest of the apples are going to taste like the good one. This is what happened to me." I nod my head knowingly. "I had an amazing one when I was 24—she was an incredible apple, you know, she was the best apple I ever had. And later I realize what a great person she was."

He allows that there is currently another "good apple" on the scene, but declines to provide details. He does acknowledge that dating in L.A. ain't easy.

"In Los Angeles, all they talk about is their career. You know, gimme a break," he says. "There's much more than that to life. Let's talk about worldwide, let's talk about politics, let's talk about what's going on around the world. I mean, we're in a major crisis—in Iraq, in Afghanistan, you know?"

It's been a year since I last saw Fabio when I drop by for a visit. As usual, he is glued to the news, this time CNN. "They are talking about Ahmadinejad coming to New York," Fabio reports. "I hate the bastard. He sponsors terrorists! The shitface ..."

Not surprisingly, Fabio's been busy juggling a whole new bag of marbles. He's developing a line of women's jeans. He's been approached about becoming the face of an American Motorcyclist Association racing team. He would love nothing more than to own a team of his own, but he worries about sponsorship conflicts. He's still shopping his Grand Prix motorcycle show, but has since added a new twist: The series will focus on up-and-coming women riders, with the big man serving as their coach and mentor. He has lined up a producer and says several networks are interested. He expects they'll come to terms any minute now.

His motorcycle collection is now 200 strong. The rusting Bentley is history, replaced by a new steel-black Lamborghini and a Mercedes SL65 AMG. The people at Evolution MotorSports are building him a specialized, state-of-the-art Porsche Twin Turbo, which he promises will be one of the fastest cars on the road.

That girlfriend he thought was a "good apple" didn't last. "I finished eating the apple," he quips. "I need a new one. I got down to the torso." The core?

"Right, the core. Sometimes, you move on in life. You realize maybe the person is not enough for you."

He's been thinking about children, but he's determined to find the right woman first.

"I want a girl with morals, values, simple, who loves life, who likes to work out, likes to have fun, but just a simple, beautiful soul," he says. "Trust me, I'm a simple person, I don't like complicated people." Also, he says, no actresses. Period.

His stance on the war hasn't wavered. "Those people, they hate us no matter what," he says. "And you know, we started the fight, so let's finish it. You can't just walk away with your back to them, because they gonna stab you."

Fabio's candidate of choice? Hillary. "She's so smart," he says. "And with her, you're getting two with one. You know I love women, because I owe my success to women. To me, it will be the biggest reward. I would love for the first time to have a woman president."

And with Hillary in charge, he says, the Iraqi insurgents better watch out. "When a woman gets pissed off at you," he says, "she's going to get you, you know?"

He's still plugging away at the Ride for the Heroes, but it's been tough. "It's so disappointing," he says. "But I'm trying, and there's quite a few celebrities who want to be a part of it."

Fabio's attention may have been distracted by another project. In the coming months, he's releasing his energy drink. It will be sold in gyms and health-food stores at first, but he plans to conquer a much broader market. At the moment, he can't say much about the product, because he still doesn't have all the patents in order. All he will say is that it's comparable to a "fountain of youth," and will "turn fat into energy in the most natural way." It's the special concoction he's been drinking for the past 20 years, and he doesn't feel a day over 25.

"I'm telling you, Spencer, it's insane," he says. "It's going to revolutionize the way people think about what they drink. This is going to be the biggest thing I ever did in my career. There's no clothing, no commercial I ever did that compares. I have people standing in line to invest money, and I say, 'No, thank you, I don't need it. I know how successful this thing is going to be, and you have to put your money where your mouth is. And that's what I did."

He adds: "You knew the Fabio that was big, but now you can understand what is huge!"

Other than that, things are pretty much the same out at the homestead. "I'm just enjoying life," he says.