Bekim Fehmiu
| Bekim Fehmiu | |
|---|---|
|
|
| Born |
1 June 1936 Sarajevo, Kingdom of Yugoslavia |
| Died | 15 June 2010 (aged 74) Belgrade, Serbia |
| Occupation | Actor |
| Years active | 1953–1998 |
Bekim Fehmiu (Serbian Cyrillic: Беким Фехмију; 1 June 1936 – 15 June 2010) was a Yugoslavian theater and film actor of Albanian ethnicity. He was the first Eastern European actor to star in Hollywood during the Cold War.
Fehmiu was born in Sarajevo, Kingdom of Yugoslavia, into an ethnic Albanian family. His father Ibrahim adopted his high-school nickname Fehmiu as a surname replacing the original Imer Halili. The family moved to Shkoder, Albania, and after three years to Prizren, in 1941, where Bekim spent his childhood. He was part of the acting club at his high school in Prizren, and after graduation he became a member of County popular theatre in Pristina, the only professional Albanian language theatre in Yugoslavia. He graduated from the Faculty of Drama Arts (FDU) in Belgrade in 1960.
In 1960, Fehmiu became a member of the Yugoslav Drama Theatre in Belgrade, which he left in 1967, citing bad treatment, to become a free artist.
Fehmiu's big break was the 1967 film I Even Met Happy Gypsies, a subtle portrayal of Roma life which won two awards in Cannes and was nominated for an Oscar. Known for his macho appearance and mild manner, Fehmiu was then wooed by Western filmmakers and signed a contract with the Academy Award winning producer Dino De Laurentiis. It was De Laurentiis who, in 1968, cast him as Odysseus in the acclaimed mini-series of The Odyssey. It was the first blockbuster of Italian television and made Fehmiu an icon in Europe.
Fehmiu seemed poised for stardom in Hollywood as well, but his first American film, The Adventurers, was a critical and financial disaster which "ruined any chances for Fehmiu to achieve similar stardom in Hollywood". He played the role of the busy father in Raimondo Del Balzo's heartbreaking film The Last Snows of Spring in 1973, and the role of a Palestinian terrorist in John Frankenheimer's 1977 masterpiece Black Sunday. Despite his Hollywood films achieving little critical success, he excelled in European art house cinema as well as in the theatre, which was his natural medium. By the end of his career he had acted in nine languages, including French, Spanish and Italian.
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