Arnold Vosloo Resource Page:
HOLLYWOOD -- We all know that The Mummy and its new sequel, The Mummy Returns, are big summer popcorn movies. Just don't assume that the actors playing the heroes and villains in them are popcorn people.
Get past stars Brendan Fraser and Rachel Weisz and the key support players in both of Stephen Sommers' flicks are among Hollywood's most intriguing, if lesser known, actors.
So, based on recent interviews, we take a closer look at Scot John Hannah, Israeli Oded Fehr, South African Arnold Vosloo and Venezuelan Patricia Velasquez.
JOHN HANNAH: This Scottish-born, London-based electrician-turned-actor plays Weisz's screw-up brother Jonathan in both movies, using his wit to try to get out of trouble. As a veteran of obscure British stage productions, Hannah first became known internationally in the hit Four Weddings And A Funeral, which he thought would be a flop.
"I liked the writing and stuff but, given where I'd been prior to that, with my own intensely neurotic political view of the world, it just wasn't the kind of film that I thought people in Britain would want to go see. It just shows what I know.
"The movies I liked were by Ken Loach and Mike Leigh, and I'd been doing fringe theatre, doing experimental stuff."
The success of Four Weddings charged up his career and led to roles in Sliding Doors, The Hurricane and now The Mummy series. He gave up electricity because the work depressed him. Acting was his only option, he says.
ODED FEHR: Born in Tel Aviv and proudly Jewish, Fehr plays the Arab hero Ardeth Bay in The Mummy movies.
"It's not a sensitive issue for me at all. I love the character and I love the culture and I love the beauty of it, and I'm very intrigued by Old Egypt.
"I am very Israeli. You grow up in a country where it's all very hard and it's a very painful history there. You leave the country and you find the most wonderful people who used to be on the other side, who are supposed to be your enemies. I wish there will be peace there but, for myself, I am very honoured to play Arabs or Muslims or Christians or Jewish."
Fehr was seen, without his Mummy robes and tattoos, as the fish-lover in the comedy Deuce Bigalow: Male Gigolo. He says he turned to acting after going into business with his father in Germany and finding it strangely empty. "Business just didn't do it for me at all."
ARNOLD VOSLOO: Born in Johannesburg and raised in Cape Town, Vosloo plays the complex villain Imhotep -- the Mummy of the title -- in both movies. His background is serious political theatre. His godfather is Athol Fugard, whose landmark play The Island opened Thursday in Toronto.
"My parents are both actors," Vosloo says, "and I'd always been involved in the theatre back home, and that's how I got started. It's the family business."
An anti-apartheid play, Born In The R.S.A., brought him to the U.S. where, on a year-long tour of the production, he was discovered by John Woo for a role in Hard Target, and by Al Pacino for a role on Broadway in Oscar Wilde's Salome. "Everybody came to see him and consequently saw me, and I got work from that and it just sort of happened."
Vosloo just shot Con Express with Sean Patrick Flanery.
PATRICIA VELASQUEZ: Born in the Venezuelan village of Wayu on the Colombian border, the Spanish-Indian Velasquez plays the 20th-century role of Meela and the ancient role of Anck-Su-Namun in The Mummy movies.
Discovered as a supermodel at 17 when a friend accidently showed her picture to an Italian model talent scout, the multi-lingual Velasquez now hopes to be an inspiration to other Indian people in South America.
"I never actually had anybody to look up to when I was home. I thought, if I can actually become an icon for my community and give them some hope, that would be great. It is happening."
Her Spanish father worked for UNESCO, so Velasquez and her five siblings had a world view as children, living in both France and Mexico before returning to Venezuela.
Velasquez recently shot the theatrical films No Vacancy and Committed and just finished a Showtime TV movie called Fidel, in which she played Fidel Castro's wife.
HOLLYWOOD -- In Hollywood, summer starts today. And it starts huge with the release of the potential blockbuster The Mummy Returns.
"The first one was so great and gave us such heat," writer-director Stephen Sommers says, adding that the surprise success of the original made him determined to do the follow-up film with the same spirit he used to create the original. "I said, 'Let's not do some lame-ass sequel!' "
Obviously, we are talking about Sommers' sequel to his 1999 re-make of The Mummy. Like that movie, The Mummy Returns is a special effects extravaganza which owes as much to the computer creations of George Lucas' Industrial Light & Magic as it does to what Sommers' cast and crew did on location.
"They know going in that it's going to be a bigger movie," Sommers says of Universal Pictures, the studio behind The Mummy series. "Bigger is easy. It's better that's the hard part. The key is the script. Ask Brendan (Fraser) or Rachel (Weisz). They would not have done this movie if they had not loved the script."
The Mummy Returns is not alone. This is the summer of sequels and re-makes. Coming soon to a theatre near you are Dr. Dolittle 2, Scary Movie 2, Rush Hour 2, American Pie 2, Jurassic Park III and Tim Burton's re-make of Planet Of The Apes.
Even Pearl Harbor, the next big summer release, May 25, goes over familiar territory imortalized in several notable films such as Tora! Tora! Tora! and From Here To Eternity.
Arnold Vosloo, who plays the Imhotep role Boris Karloff originated in the 1932 version of The Mummy, is back in The Mummy Returns. Raised in South Africa in a theatrical family with a passion for serious socio-political works, Vosloo admits that he might not seek out Mummy movies if he weren't in them. He prefers European films, counting the Dutch classic Antonio's Line as a favourite film. But The Mummy Returns?
"Probably not," he says. "But it is the kind of movie I would go to with four or five friends. Get the big popcorn and the big drink. Just go and have a good time."
Vosloo's only hangup with The Mummy and The Mummy Returns is that it creeps him out when Fraser and Weisz kiss, first as battling lovers in the 1999 flick and now in the sequel as a married couple with an eight-year-old son.
"It's weird for me," says the candid Vosloo. "It's just a personal thing. I can't take their relationship in the movie seriously because, to me, they look like brother and sister. They have the same eyes. Whenever I see them kiss, it's weird, it's weird.
"But they both are good in this movie (the sequel), especially Brendan. He owns this movie. He's the Guy, as opposed to being goofy or whatever Brendan normally does. In this one, he's the f...ing Guy!"
For Patricia Velasquez, the Venezuelan Spanish-Indian who plays the ancient princess and villain Anck-Su-Namun in both movies, The Mummy Returns was an opportunity to expand her screen time and deepen her relationships with fellow actors, a process she thinks will enrich the experience for audiences.
"The great thing about The Mummy two is that everybody knows each other now. And, although the first script was good, this script is better. I also think the special effects are great."
Which brings us to how actors survive doing effects scenes. Velasquez says she and fellow cast members played it for the truth of each scene. "We really stick to our feelings. Arnold and I, for example, we stay really, really close to this love story and then really trust the people of ILM."
It's the summer season. A lot of actors will be trying to survive the special effects. Big bags of popcorn help
