Interview: Stargate's Erick Avari

Erick Avari has one of those "that guy" faces. Even if you couldn't put a name to the face, if you were to see the picture

to the right, you'd recognize him as "that guy" from the dozens of movies he's appeared in over the past decade and a half

-- a figure that, surprisingly, encompasses only half of his career as an actor. While you might know him from Stargate, The

Mummy, or Mr. Deeds, his original love was theater, honing his craft in the New York theater scene with roles in everything

from "A Midsummer Night's Dream" at the Joseph Papp Public Theater to "The King And I" on Broadway.

Many moviegoers' first exposure to Avari was in the role of Kasuf in the 1994 science fiction blockbuster Stargate. It was a

challenging role that required Avari to embody a character almost entirely through expression and gesture, while speaking an

Egyptian-based language created specifically for the film. He also holds the honor of being one of the few actors to have

appeared in both the original film and one of the numerous spin-offs, returning to play Kasuf in several episodes of Stargate SG-1. It's an accomplishment that ensures he's familiar to many genre fans, especially when coupled with appearances over

the years on the likes of Babylon 5, Alias, Heroes, and three separate Trek series. To celebrate the release of a new 15th Anniversary Edition Blu-ray of Stargate, Erick took some time to chat with us over the phone about his memories of the shoot, acting without the benefit of scripted dialogue, and how he accidentally fell into the career of a Hollywood film actor.

What was the shape of the non-English-speaking characters in the actual script? Was any of that dialogue actually scripted, or was it just descriptions of your character's actions and state of mind? The latter. I believe I had one or two scripted lines. Other than that, everything was just...some of it had been written in, like the charge, leading the charge at the end of the movie. That stuff certainly was written in, but in terms of trying to come up with something to say or the words to use, that was all on the set.

You mentioned that you improvised the candy-bar scene. Both in that scene and in general, how did you approach this role where so much had to be conveyed with facial expressions and body language and inference? What I latched onto right away was the incongruity of these two worlds colliding. Kasuf's world, which was really ancient Egypt, frozen in time, his world comes colliding with the modern world of the soldiers -- their garb, their food, their habits, they way they held their bodies. All those things. It was a challenge for the actor to not fall into a casual standing position, for example. The gestures I kind of stole from hieroglyphs. I had to figure out how I would hold my body based on the world that I was living in. The only reference point I had were hieroglyphs, so that's what I played off. And then, of course, the humor of the different foods, for example. I eat the candy bar and James is confronted with that monster-looking stuff [laughs]. There was a lot of that that jumped off the page and I thought, "Oh boy, I can really have fun with that!"

Date：2009-12-3　【Return】