Oded Fehr plays the part of Ardeth Bey in Stephen Sommers' film The Mummy, which was released May 7, 1999. This character is the leader of a secret society charged with watching over Hamunaptra, the City of the Dead, and preventing the awakening of the mummy Imhotep, Priest of Osiris. (The name of his character is also a sly reference to the original film starring Boris Karlof, but that's another story.) It is Fehr's voice you hear in the opening narration of the film.
This information comes from The Mummy web site and from the site of the Bristol Old Vic Theater School.
Oded Fehr was born in Tel Aviv, Israel, to European parents, and raised in Tel Aviv. He joined the Israeli Navy for his National Service duty when he was 18. When this was over after 3 years, he went to Europe to pursue a business career. It was there that Fehr first discovered acting. He then trained at the Bristol Old Vic Theatre School, graduating in 1997. He went on to appear as Don Juan in a production of Don Juan Comes Back From War at the Courtyard Theatre in London, and in some BBC productions (see the Credits).
Fehr is apparently an accomplished photographer - he did several black and white portraits of friends and classmates in the Old Vic 1998 graduating class, which are posted on the Internet. The photos are quite compelling; enough to make one wonder whether he is also interested in directing or cinematography. He certainly has the eye for it. See The Old Vic Theater School Home Page; "Raise the Curtain", and then follow the link for the Class of '98 to have a look at them; enjoy the rest of this friendly site too - the feeling of Old Vic as a close-knit community really comes across.
Oh, yes, I know there's barely enough here for any real sort of page yet. After all, Fehr has been out of drama school barely two years. He's only been in the one major film so far. So there isn't a large body of work to pore over yet. But I know I wasn't the only one who noticed him in The Mummy. So he will continue to work, and we'll get to see more of this intriguing and handsome actor. I'm very interested to see what kind of roles he might take when he's getting enough offers that he can afford to be choosy. I wish him success!
Good News!
The Insider column of a recent issue of People magazine (the one with Shania Twain on the cover) says that Mr. Fehr has been cast as an outlaw in the upcoming Western, Texas Rangers. According to this same article, he had been cast in The Mummy a mere two months after graduating from Old Vic. (Warning - spoiler here; if by some chance you haven't seen The Mummy yet, skip to the next paragraph!) All the early drafts of the scipt had Ardeth Bey dying a noble death; when they realized that they might be making a sequel, they revised the script. The sequel is said to involve the mummy appearing in London presumably in the late 1920's.
If Mr. Fehr is online, he must be surprised (maybe mortified would be a more descriptive word?) at the outpouring of attention he's received on the Web; there are are already several fan pages up! Premature as I thought this one might be, it wasn't even the first!
More Oded Fehr sites:
An Oded Fehr Appreciation Page - Message boards, and a mailing list.
Casenet Oded Fehr Page - some interesting links, and fan comments.
Another fan site with some really fun pictures; including one of our subject in dance class back at Old Vic. ;-)
Article about the Premiere party for The Mummy
More Mummy premiere stuff; the photo shown above mistakenly identified as Omid Djalili
Enjoy a few more photos I found on the Web.
You might also want to take some time to explore Arabic culture on the Web. I've always admired the beauty of Arabic calligraphy; this link is a neat starting place to see what it's about. The image used on the background is "secret of fire", written in Arabic.
Each culture where Arabic is spoken is famous for it's poetry. If you share my interest in the Arabic culture and the cultures of the Middle East, check out the links below:
About Arabic cultures and poetry:
Al Mashriq is a beautiful, informative site about the peoples and cultures of the Eastern Mediterranean and Levant.
For Arabic-speakers and the more adventuresome, some poetry in Arabic
In another week or two, I'll be adding some info on music from Northern Africa, the Levant, and the Middle East. One disc I highly reccommend is called Cairo to Casablanca: An Arabic Musical Odyssey, a compilation on the Putumayo label. It features music from all over Northern Africa. Throw your previous impressions of Arabic music out the window; the artists from this collection integrate traditional, jazz, and Rai styles and Latin and Caribbean rhythms using both modern and traditional instruments; the results are startling yet undeniably pleasing.
About the Tuareg peoples of North Africa:
Kenzi sells Tuareg jewelry (including some that looks a lot like what Ardeth Bey was wearing in The Mummy. Be sure to check their fantastic links page, too.
Meet Chek Ag Baye (pictured below) and his people via the Witness Online Documentary Series "Roads to Refuge", an incredibly rich and informative site that uses slideshows and Quicktime VR panoramas to tell the story of the Tuaregs of Mali.
Chek Ag BayeMy title for this page, Secret of Fire, is taken from a work by Iraqi-born Abdul Wahab Al-Bayati, a pioneer of modern Arabic poetry:
On the last day
I kissed her hands,
Her eyes / her lips.
I said to her: you are now
Ripe like an apple
Half of you: a woman
The other half: impossible to describe.
The words
Escaped me
And I escaped them
Both of us collapsed.
Now I pray
For the childhood of this light face
And for this ripe, burning body
I bring my face closer
To this gushing spring,
Thirsty.
On the last day, I said to her:
You are the fire of the forests
The water of the river
The secret of the fire
Half of you cannot be described
The other half: a priestess in the temple of Ishtar.
I have been out of town, and am just getting caught up on things; I should be making some more updates to the page soon. Thanks for all your feedback!
My other fan page, for actor Kevin Spacey, was authored in part to help me learn HTML; I'm using this page to help me master Cascading Style Sheets. If your browser supports CSS, this page should look pretty damn cool. If the background is gray, and everything is aligned along the left margin, I highly recommend that you upgrade your browser. And for now, at least (as much as I hate to say it), Internet Explorer has better CSS support than Navigator (though this page looks fine in both IE and Navigator in their latest versions).
Please note that the pictures included here are for information only; Universal owns the copyright on the stills from The Mummy. I am trying to find out who to credit for that incredible little photo at the top, which was on the Old Vic Home Page. The big photo was from the film premiere.
On the Web, a fan page is probably the sincerest form of flattery - some of them are an awful lot of work, and I put some effort into making this page look just so. Of course, since I am using this page as my own little CSS lab, you can expect the appearance to change as I get inspired. I hope you enjoy it - the latest browser will make sure you get the full effect. Note that I am just a fan; there is nothing "official" about this page (or anyone else's, as far as I know)! E-mail me using the link below if you have any comments. Thanks so much for visiting.