Top TV role for Arnold Vosloo
His fine performance in hit US TV show Bosch is getting SA-born actor Arnold Vosloo serious recognition
THERE’S no heavy make-up. No weird bulges growing on his neck. Fans might not recognise Arnold Vosloo in his latest role because this time he looks so ordinary. “It’s so good to play the middle- aged man that I am. I don’t have to dye my grey hair,” Arnold (55) says about his appearance in respected police drama Bosch which airs locally on DStv’s Universal Channel.
He’s talking to YOU by telephone from his three-storey townhouse in Santa Monica, California, in the US. “No, the place isn’t covered in posters from my movies,” he tells us. “Not even one. When I’m here I stay away from work.”
Arnold is the Alberton boykie who’s never become blinded by the bright lights of Hollywood – despite having earned millions of dollars as the 3 000-year-old priest in the Mummy movies. He’s long stopped counting but reckons he has at least 65 films and TV series to his credit.
In the ’80s he gained fame in South Africa as Boetie in the Afrikaans films Boetie Gaan Border Toe and Boetie Op Manoeuvres. Almost every year since then he’s been involved in a new project, such as the TV series 24 in which he played the ruthless Turkish terrorist Habib Marwan.
In the third season of Bosch he’s cast in the role of Rafael “Rudy” Tafero, a former policeman now working as head of security for film director Andre Holland. Did he plant evidence on his former colleague Harry Bosch? Or could he even have committed murder?
The series has garnered high praise in America, where the final episode of the third season has just become available online.
“Last night at a restaurant around the corner someone sent me a note: ‘Loved you in Bosch’,” says Arnold, who’s been living in America for nearly 30 years.
In his other roles he’s almost always been 100-percent evil villain. “In this TV series I could prove to myself and others that I can play a character with many facets in a nuanced way,” he says. This is why he believes Bosch is something of a breakthrough for him.
“The days of big muscles and a sixpack stomach in movies like The Mummy are over for me. I plan to do something with strong dialogue like Bosch once a year and in between I’ll do a B-grade horror where I get skewered on a spear. Then at around age 60 I’ll be able to say goodbye to it all and run away.
“My dream is to live in South Africa for a few months at a time,” Arnold says. With marked resolve in his voice he adds, “It’s going to happen, definitely.”
HE’S chatting so amiably from the other side of the globe it’s like being with an old friend around a braai. “I’m in a very good place now. I’m a working actor,” he says without a trace of an American accent. As we talk, Arnold peppers his sentences with everyday Afrikaans swearwords with such ease it’s hard to
believe he’s been based in Hollywood for decades. Very occasionally he’ll punctuate his speech in true American style with a staccato “yeah, yeah, yeah”.
He’s just returned from a morning walk on the beach with the young whippet Zuzu that belongs to him and his American wife, Sylvia Ahí (57). “At 14 months the little bugger breaks everything if we don’t go for a walk,” he explains.
Until he starts work on his next project Arnold is playing the role of househusband. Sylvia, a marketing director, works for well-known accounting firm Ernst & Young in nearby Los Angeles.
In the morning, after making breakfast, he reads the local newspapers and catches up on South African news on the internet – Daily Maverick and Afrikaans website Netwerk24, he tells us. “Then I might take my wife’s suits in for drycleaning, take a nap and plan supper.
“But when I start working my personal life stops. Then it’s all about memorising pages of dialogue and shooting for up to 16 hours, even in the rain. Then nothing matters except the movie.”
He and Sylvia have been married for nearly 20 years. Arnold had been living in Santa Monica for about seven years when a South African neighbour introduced him to Sylvia. Two years later they tied the knot in a quick ceremony in Las Vegas.
With Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie’s divorce on the front pages these days, many people have become even more sceptical about celebrities’ marriages.
“I think the success of ours could be attributed to the fact that I met her when I was in my thirties,” Arnold says about his own marriage. “I didn’t feel like parties or going out any more. I’d rather be in the kitchen and go to bed at 9 pm. I didn’t want to meet models and actresses any more.”
He and Sylvia try to make sure that no more than two weeks pass without seeing each other. When Arnold is work- ing on a movie she’ll fly out to see him or if he has a few days off, he’ll go home.
“I’m also glad that I’m not very, very famous,” Arnold says. “It’s a big burden to carry. The price you pay for the gift of good [acting] roles. Every time you walk through a door there’s a cellphone in your face.”
Since appearing together in the film Blood Diamond in 2006, Arnold and Leonardo DiCaprio have become close friends. When the Oscar-winning actor visits, he pulls his car into Arnold’s garage and they sit drinking coffee and whisky in the kitchen, “where no one will be falling through the roof to take pictures”.
“Leonardo is a good soul – a genius actor, but a down-to-earth guy.”
Arnold is also down to earth. He couldn’t be bothered with red carpets and glitzy celebrity parties. Among his handful of Hollywood friends is Embeth Davidtz, another South African-born star, who lives nearby.
Every two weeks Arnold and Sylvia try to break away to their country home, which is about three-and-half-hours’ drive from Santa Monica.
“We call it The Farm, but there’s not really any farming going on there. It’s 40 acres [16 hectares] in size and with a river where you can catch trout. There are apple trees that are about 100 years old. It’s rural like the Free State,” he says.
On trips home to his 83-year-old mom, Joyce – who lives with his sister, Nadia Vosloo (60), in Alberton, Gauteng – Arnold attracts attention from South Africans who remember him fondly from the Boetie movies and Circles In The Forest, the film based on Dalene Matthee’s popular novel.
In America the film for which he’s still remembered is the 1993 action movie Hard Target with Jeanne-Claude Van Damme. In that film his character cut off people’s ears. “It’s usually rougharound-the-edges characters who recognise me from that – then I’m too scared to ask if they’d maybe seen the film in jail!” Arnold quips.
Thanks to the Bosch series he’s enjoying renewed popularity. He’s still waiting to hear if his character will be returning in the fourth season. But in the meantime he’ll soon be seen in the horror film The Harrowing.
“Who knows? Maybe I’ll see you one of these days, when I finally come to shoot a good Afrikaans movie in South Africa,” he muses. It’s nice to have so many options, he adds. To be known and respected.
“After all these years I consider myself to be a good professional actor. No one will ever be able to say to my face, ‘Hey man, give it up. You’re a s**t actor’.”
'I’m glad I’m not very, very famous'