I
n "The Mummy," Oded Fehr, as the desert warrior Ardeth Bay, was meant to bite the dust, dispatched by a swarm of badly bandaged resurrected horrors. Luckily someone noticed that he looked much too good to die, so his death scene was axed and a scene was added at the end of the smash-hit action-adventure. He was able to ride off, glamorously intact, toward the horizon. Now he's able to ride on back with more screen time in "The Mummy Returns."
"I'm very happy I didn't die," says the 30-year-old Israeli-born actor, trying to neatly recount what Ardeth will be up to in the sequel without giving away too much of the complicated plot. Over the course of six months last year, he was reunited with writer-director Stephen Sommers, stars Brendan Fraser, Rachel Weisz and John Hannah, in addition to Patricia Velasquez and Arnold Vosloo as the ancient Egyptians who refuse to stay in their tombs, and most of the same production personnel.
Fehr worked hard to improve his horseback riding skills so as to do more of his own stunts in a huge battle scene against nine-foot creatures, which took about a month to shoot in the Moroccan desert. Stunt men stood in for the creatures, later added by digital special effects, but no one was standing in for Fehr during scary stuff like when he had to "rear up his horse or charge down a sand dune with 200 extras behind me who didn't necessarily know how to control their horses...or lean out from the saddle to pull up a sword stuck in the ground."
Fehr actually felt more confident on horseback than acting out another fight sequence, shot in England on a London double-decker bus. "When you see it with the creature I'm fighting edited in, it's fine, but it was so difficult to do with nothing there to actually fight with. We worked out the routine beforehand, but it's difficult to find the energy and to throw yourself about with nothing pushing or attacking you. It just looks hilarious."
Fehr says the sequel contains in full measure "all the fun things audiences like about the original -- the action, the comedy, the romance and the beautiful, beautiful shots of the desert." The stern-visaged Ardeth is even allowed to show a glimmer of a smile at moments as his relationship with the now-married Rick and Evelyn O'Connell is much warmer and closer.
Fehr performed for his family a bit as kid but initially "disregarded" acting as a career. "I was very practical. I'm still very practical," he explains, reasoning that his nature didn't seem right for the profession. He worked briefly in his dad's business in Germany but signed up for "a silly, simple acting course." That led to a few stage roles locally. With his family's support, he moved to England to study at the Bristol Old Vic Theatere School. These days he's working with a voice coach to learn different accents in the hopes that he can avoid the typecasting that often straightjackets foreign actors.
Since first turning heads as Ardeth in 1999, Fehr played an Italian stud in the broad farce "Deuce Bigalow: Male Gigolo." "A lot of people wondered why I did that because it is a very silly movie, but I enjoyed that it enabled people to see me as something completely different than very dark, very brooding," he says, hoping that his expanded role in "The Mummy Returns" will likewise increase his visibility as a versatile artist.
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H
e gets to kiss Patricia Velasquez more than he did the last time," jokes Arnold Vosloo, explaining one very good reason he's glad that his character Imhotep is back out of the tomb in "The Mummy Returns."
"It's really cool to be able to come back and have a really clear grasp on what you are doing," says the six-foot-one-inch South African-born actor who put the skin, flesh and smoldering eyes on the desiccated bag of bones who wreaked havoc as "The Mummy" -- the disgraced priest who attempts to resurrect his gold- dusted beloved, portrayed by the scantily clad Velasquez.
The original cast reassembled for writer-director Stephen Sommers in Morocco and England. Vosloo says, "We had always trusted Stephen, but this time we were able to help him much more. The first time it was like dress rehearsal, this time it's like a week after opening night."
The stage reference is not surprising from Vosloo, the son of actors who has always lived the life of a wandering player. He worked extensively in theatre in his homeland and achieved considerable success touring America in "Born in the R.S.A." and starring as John the Baptist opposite Al Pacino's King Herod in the Circle in the Square's production of "Salome."
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n film, his roles include a baddie in John Woo's 1993 thriller "Hard Target" and the synthetic skinned crime fighter in the two direct-to-video sequels of "Darkman" -- "The Return of Durant" in 1994 and "Die, Darkman, Die" in 1996. He admits that when the Mummy role was first offered, although he really liked Sommers' script, he wasn't too hyped about "playing a monster." He suggested that it would be more satisfying "if I could really play a fallen priest who was a man in love."
"I guess they bought my bulls---," he laughs. There were some touches of eternal lust in the first movie, and that theme has been expanded a bit in this one. His costume has also expanded. The postage stamp-size, Speedo-type loin cloth, which the special effects crew demanded so they could play around with the entire body image of the solidly built, smooth-skinned actor, is replaced this time by "bigger pants."
The movie takes place 10 years after the previous story, when Imhotep's rotten old corpse is taken to London and the now-married O'Connells (Brendan Fraser and Rachel Weisz) just "can't keep that book closed." Vosloo doesn't want to give away any of the surprises about what happens when Imhotep is "regenerated as his old, evil self," but he does note that keeping him company are a plague of scorpions and a whole bunch of "ugly little Pygmy mummies that will scare the hell out of you."
Vosloo can't offer much explanation as to why people seem so fascinated by mummies, although he does suggest, "maybe it's because they are immortal." For his part, he has no wish to be entombed: His fantasy about the best way to die when the time comes is to go the wildlife game reserve in Namibia, take off all his clothes and walk into the bush, his remains to be consumed by the animals.
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