Brendan Fraser, comeback king: from outcast to Oscar winner

After a long period of relative silence, Brendan Fraser is back with an incredibly successful performance. His movie 'The Whale' earned him numerous awards, including the Oscar for Best Actor, the SAG, Critics Choice, and TIFF Awards.

The film tells the moving story of an obese, wheelchair-bound literature professor who tries to reconnect with his 17-year-old daughter. The role also earned Fraser a nomination for an Oscar in the category of Best Actor.

'The Whale' is directed by Darren Aronofsky (left). Besides Brendan Fraser (right in the picture), Samuel D. Hunter, Sadie Sink, and Hong Chau star in the movie.

The daughter of Brendan Fraser in 'The Whale' is played by Sadie Sink, the actress who played Max in the acclaimed Netflix series 'Stranger Things.'

Six minutes: that's how long Brendan Fraser received a standing ovation at the 2022 Venice Film Festival when 'The Whale' was first screened.

Listening to the applause, Brendan could not hold back his tears. This is the same thing that happened to many people as they watched 'The Whale.'

It was a glorious moment. After a difficult period in his life, Brendan Fraser has reappeared with a performance worthy of the greatest applause.

At the end of 2021, Brendan Fraser had left his fans flabbergasted when he appeared overweight at the Tribeca Film Festival in New York to present the film 'No Sudden Move.'

At that point, he explained that his new appearance was meant for the shooting of 'The Whale.'

Brendan Fraser became one of the most demanded actors in Hollywood in the 90s and 00s, starring in ‘George of the Jungle’ and the film saga 'The Mummy.' However, for many reasons, he would enter years of ostracism. By now, Fraser seems to have put his problems behind him.

Brendan Fraser's interest in the acting world started in his teenage years. In 1990, he graduated in theater from the Cornish College of Art in Seattle, and the next year he moved to LA to try his luck. There, he got a small part as a stuntman in which he had to be thrown against a pinball machine. The result? "I believe I fractured a rib," stated the actor. This would only be the first warning in quite a bumpy ride…

His small encounter with the pinball machine was key for Brendan Fraser to be chosen to star in 'Encino Man,' along with Sean Astin. In this teen comedy, he plays a cavern man who wakes up in the 90s in Los Angeles.

Just like the cavern man in ‘Encino Man’, Fraser also woke up as an actor. And the doors of Hollywood opened for him… In his first years, he shared the screen with Ben Affleck, Matt Damon, and Chris O’Donnell in ‘School Ties’ (1992); with Joe Pesci in ‘With Honors’ (1994); with Steve Buscemi and Adam Sandler in ‘Airheads’ (1994); and with Albert Brooks in ‘The Scout’ (1994).

But it was with ‘George of the Jungle’ in 1997 that Brendan Fraser became one of the most demanded actors of the moment. From there, he would be in the successful film saga ‘The Mummy’ and in other movies like ‘Blast from the Past’ (1998), ‘Bedazzled’ (2000), ‘The Quiet American’ (2000), and ‘Crash’ (2006), among others.

Sadly, it's easy to fall from heaven to hell. Little by little, Brendan Fraser started to enter a crisis that kept increasing. His first problems came from an excessive workload which began to affect his body. In a GQ interview, he declared: "I was really trying too hard, in a self-destructive way." Injuries and stress began to take their toll.

In 2003, his problems worsened as the actor was sexually harassed. He disclosed the incident in an interview in 2018. It was the reason why, slowly, he began to retreat from public life and enter a dangerous path for his professional career.

It happened at the Beverly Hills hotel, after a lunch organized by the Hollywood Foreign Press Association (HFPA). As he was leaving the hotel that day, Brendan Fraser bumped into journalist Philip Berk who, at the time, was president of the association in charge of awarding the Golden Globes. At that moment, Berk grabbed the actor’s behind.

In an interview with GQ where the actor described the events, he stated: "His left hand reaches around, grabs my a** cheek, and one of his fingers touches me in the taint. And he starts moving it around. I felt ill, I felt like a little kid. I felt like there was a ball in my throat. I thought I was going to cry."

On his part, Berk said that it was all a fabrication. Fraser went to the HFPA but "the silence was deafening." After 2003, he was rarely invited to the Golden Globes anymore. The incident pushed Fraser into isolation. "I became depressed," the actor said. "I was blaming myself and I was miserable."

It took Brendan Fraser 15 years - from 2003 to 2018 - to dare to speak publicly about the matter. He joined the #MeToo movement in which many of his colleagues stepped forward to report similar abuse situations. For him, it had caused serious problems in his professional career.

During those years, his depression went together with the multiple injuries he had accumulated while shooting his movies. Brendan Fraser had to undergo surgery several times, which also affected his morale.

Problems also appeared in his private life. His visits to hospitals coincided with the end of his marriage with actress Afton Smith. They had been married for nine years - and dated five more years - and the couple had three children together: Griffin (2002), Holden (2004), and Leland (2006).

The physical and mental crisis he was suffering, along with the feeling that Berk and the association would do anything to sabotage his career, didn’t stop Brendan Fraser from working. He began to participate in much smaller productions, though, and slowly the general public forgot about him.

The beginning of the comeback of Brendan Fraser would come in 2016 when he was cast as the melancholic prison officer John Gunther in the series ‘The Affair’. From that moment on, and especially thanks to the morale boost of his public confession in 2018, he has been able to re-establish himself with new roles in productions like ‘Trust’, ‘Titans’ and ‘Doom Patrol’.

Nowadays, Brendan Fraser is living a 'second youth' as an actor. In 2021, ‘No Sudden Move’ appeared, and he also stars in an upcoming Martin Scorcese movie: 'Killers of the Flower Moon,' set for release in 2023. Then, in 2022, there was also the acclaimed drama 'The Whale.'

In ‘Killers of the Flower Moon,' to be released in May 2023, Brendan Fraser appears with Leonardo DiCaprio and Robert De Niro in a movie that tells the story of the murder of native American Osage tribe members and the way in which it was investigated.

‘Behind the Curtain of Night,’ also to come out in the near future, is the story about a man that comes back to life and is able to see his past lives. Other stars in its cast are Marcia Cross and Dawn Olivieri.

Finally, Brendan Fraser was also supposed to become Firefly, the villain of a 2022 DC Universe and HBO movie, ‘Batgirl.' He was sharing the screen with Leslie Grace, the superheroine, and was directed by Adil El Arbi and Bilall Fallah, the same directors of ‘Bad Boys for Life’ (2020). Sadly, and mysteriously, 'Batgirl' was withdrawn by HBO and DC.

Despite the setback of 'Batgirl,' it is an excellent time in Brendan Fraser's career. The public and critics have embraced the actor as never before.

By far the biggest success is 'The Whale.' Fraser hinted in an interview with Newsweek that the film had "nothing to do with anything I've done before." And the critics agreed: He was rewarded with the incredible honor of the 2023 Oscar for Best Actor.