Arnold Vosloo Resource Page:
Scantily clad stars do battle in 'The Mummy Returns'
By LOUIS B. HOBSON
South African actor Arnold Vosloo, who reprises his role as the mummified Imhotep in The Mummy Returns, reveals there are hidden perils in playing the 3,000-year-old monster.
"Making the first film, I got claustrophobic in the scene where the priests wrapped me in bandages and then put me in the tomb. It was so constricting. I couldn't move and I was terrified I won't be able to breathe and wouldn't be able to tell anyone," recalls Vosloo.
In The Mummy Returns, Imhotep is stripped of his powers so he has an old-fashioned fight with Brendan Fraser's dashing adventurer, Rick O'Connell.
"Brendan's a very big man. He's taller and weighs more than I do. He's also very strong."
That wasn't Fraser's biggest advantage.
"All Imhotep is wearing is a loin cloth. Brendan had pads under his clothes. I was completely exposed. When any body part hits the floor or gets hit, that's no special effect. It's me."
There's an even worse disadvantage to wearing such a skimpy costume. Vosloo had to be shaved from head to foot.
"They waxed me once but that was the first and last time. I refused to repeat the process so first thing every morning the makeup people shaved me with electric razors."
Between filming his two Mummy movies, Vosloo starred in Con Express with Sean Patrick Flanery.
"The role I really wanted was the part James Gandolfini played in The Mexican. I thought it would be great fun to play a gay hit man."
Universal Pictures is already creating a prequel to The Mummy for wrestler The Rock, called The Scorpion King. There is no talk yet of a second sequel. "I'm sure it will all depend on the box office for this one," says Vosloo.
"The great thing about Imhotep is that he can be resurrected in any decade. I think it would be great fun to have him awaken in modern times. Kind of a Crocodile Dundee in Los Angeles only with Imhotep."
When it comes to fight sequences, The Mummy Returns is an equal opportunity movie.
Patricia Velasquez, who plays Imhotep's love interest Anck-Su-Namun, grapples with Rick's wife Evelyn, played by Rachel Weisz, who is really the incarnation of an Egyptian pharaoh's daughter.
Their battles are reminiscent of those in The Matrix and Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon.
"When Rachel and I first read the screenplay and we saw that we had to have a fight, we were not impressed," recalls Valasquez, a model-turned-actress from Venezuela.
"We thought it would just be gratuitous because it was two women in bikinis fighting. Then we met with the fight director and saw what he had in mind was really quite special and spectacular."
Velasquez and Weisz worked with their trainers and choreographer for four months.
"When it was time to film our fight sequences, the set was crowded. Everybody turned up and brought friends. Rachel and I thought we should have sold tickets."
Valasquez proudly announces she did all but one of her stunts, a rather complicated backflip from a wall that ends in splits.
"I did the splits but I didn't come off that wall into them. It wasn't all that difficult because I have been dancing since I was a child."
