Why did Brendan Fraser disappear from Hollywood? The incredible story of its rise and fall

After the lights came on, the only thing that could be heard in that room was applause. The attendees were getting to their feet and continuing to high-five their palms in approval of what they had just seen. The movie was “The Whale”; the place, the Venice Festival; and the protagonist, brendan fraser. The standing applause from the audience, including many of his colleagues, was not only a sign of admiration for his work on this new film, but a welcome back home.

After all, if the world of cinema once again opened its doors to actors with an erratic or excessively extravagant behavior, such as Robert Downey Jr. or Mickey Rourke, the first, a Marvel hero; the second, nominated for an Oscar after his great “comeback”-, why deny a new opportunity to someone who has not had problems with drugs, alcohol or with their directors or co-stars? Hollywood loves vindication stories, the ones in which its heroes rise and fall, are misunderstood, exiled, abandoned or forgotten, only to come back stronger than before, more lucid and successful than ever. In this sense, the standing ovation in Venice received by Brendan Fraser, one of the most brilliant stars of the late 20th and early 20th centuries, means that the vacant place is still his.

The actor – born in Indianapolis, 53 years ago – thanked him by also standing up and offering a bow to the public, who was excited by each of his reactions. His emotion was evident. The tears in his eyes, too.

Some, however, may have wondered, why cry before applause? Why appear weak or vulnerable when you’ve only done your job on a new film? Why does everyone act like they have so much respect and affection for him? Perhaps because that day, at that time and in that room, after the screening, no one deserved it as much as he did: he waited more than 15 years for a moment like this in his career.

“Thank you for this wonderful reception, I hope this film makes the same deep impression it did on me,” Fraser said in Venice. Impossible to find a more propitious setting to meet again with the love of his life, the one that seemed to have left him aside: the cinema.

Life is Beautiful

It is unlikely to think of the American cinema of the 90s and not remember the face of Brendan Fraser between laughter and acrobatics. Perhaps one of the first images of his that the general public has refers us to the funny “Airheads”) or “Cabezas hueca” (1994), the story of three clumsy rockers who, desperate for their songs to be played on the radio, hijack a station. . “We are in the air, but nobody is listening” was the motto of the film. The other two musicians were Adam Sandler and Steve Buscemi.

Fraser didn’t seem like the same guy who, just 2 years earlier, had been nominated for Most Promising Actor by the Chicago Film Critics Awards for his powerful performance in the drama “School Ties,” the story of a young football star. schoolboy who is forced to hide that he is Jewish. There he had a great hand in hand with Matt Damon and other promising actors of his generation, such as Chris O’Donnell or Ben Affleck. The same year he had made his film debut with “Encino Man” (California Man), where he was a funny caveman just thawed out, exposed to the dangers of the 20th century. Another student story, “With Honors,” gave him the opportunity to work alongside Joe Pesci. Life seemed to go by pretty fast, and Brendan seemed addicted to speed.

The years 97 and 98 were the prelude of what was to come. First, the confirmation that in comedy he moved with the same singular naturalness with which George from the Jungle did from liana to liana. The comedy became an immediate success and is still selected among the best of that decade today. It’s not exactly a good movie, but Fraser’s charisma gives it a particular charm. However, it did not take long for him to venture into different registers. “Gods and Monsters”, a story inspired by the life of James Whale, director of the classics “Frankenstein” or “The Invisible Man”, was an opportunity that served to show that his dramatic vein was intact.

It didn’t take long for Brendan Fraser to start an adventure with which he would be identified to this day: “The Mummy”, a blockbuster saga that spanned 3 films and made him one of the biggest stars of the moment. Between mummy and mummy, however, he took time for other works that will show his versatility: the comedy “To hell with the devil” (2000), where he is a naive who sells his soul to a hornless Elizabeth Hurley, but devilish; “The impassive American” (2002), an intrigue in which he acted alongside Michael Caine or “Crash” (2004), a drama that won 3 Oscars, including Best Picture. During those years he also stood out on TV, thanks to his participation as a guest in the medical comedy “Scrubs”.

In 2008, however, with the premiere of “The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor” -third and last installment of the saga starring him- and “Journey to the Center of the Earth” -disappointing adaptation of Jules Verne’s classic- , seemed to end forever a stage of his life. Because, despite the fact that he continued acting –in perfectly forgettable projects, yes-, nothing was ever the same. Until recently, no one knew why.

“It makes me so happy to see this beautiful standing ovation for Brendan. He supported me when I entered his franchise with a role in ‘The Mummy Returns’, which started my career in Hollywood”, Dwayne Johnson, The Rock, commented on his social networks about the applause received by Fraser in Venice. Interestingly, The Rock not only ended up starring in a spin off of “The Mummy”, “The Scorpion King”, but he replaced Fraser in the second part of Journey to the Center of the Earth. In those years, Fraser lived difficulties that the world did not even imagine.

In 2003, in the middle of an industry event, Fraser was sexually harassed by Philip Berk, a powerful and influential South African journalist who was president of the Hollywood Foreign Press Association, the institution behind the Golden Globe. . The actor’s account of the events is shocking: “His left hand moved to grab my buttock and one of his fingers touched my perineum and began to move it. I felt sick, like I was a little child, like I had a lump in my throat. I thought he was going to make me cry. He blamed me and I felt terrible, because he told me: ‘This is nothing, this guy moved around and groped me.’ The summer passed and I don’t remember what movie I made next. He made me seclude. It made me reclusive and the work began to wither for me.”

Brendan Fraser, then 34, feared people’s reaction to telling it. He also feared for the future of his career. His agents demanded an apology from the Association and he only received a formal letter from Berk in which he did not accept the fact. “I felt like someone had thrown invisible paint on me,” Fraser said in an interview for “GQ” magazine in 2018.

The humiliation and minimization of what happened began to affect him emotionally. Not only that. His body also began to ask him for a break, after years of action scenes, blows and falls while filming, without using doubles. “I think I tried too hard, in a way that is destructive,” he later confessed.

For more than 7 years he had to undergo expensive treatments and operations to alleviate his ailments. By 2008, the year in which he starred in the aforementioned “Journey to the Center of the Earth”, Brendan Fraser did not give more. In a short span of time, he lost his mother and divorced his wife and mother of his three children, Afton Smith, who demanded nearly $80,000 a month in child support after their marriage ended.

The only projects that appeared to the actor were mediocre or with little diffusion, which, of course, did not pay like the blockbusters to which he had become accustomed. Before the end of the first decade of the century, the old ‘sex symbol’ of millionaire income and full life, was a broken man, with a careless appearance, who was sinking more and more into sadness, overweight and cinematographic insignificance. despite his enormous talent.

His reappearance, however, was not sudden. Roles in series such as “The Affair”, “Condor” or “Doom Patrol”, as well as a small appearance in “No Sudden Move”, the most recent film by Steven Soderbergh, influenced by film noir, already showed that Fraser was fighting for new and better opportunities. A few months ago, he was announced as a villain in “Batgirl”, a project that was finally cancelled, leaving his actors -Leslie Grace, JK Simmons, Michael Keaton, among others- with enormous disappointment. Fraser charged the hit.

But then Darren Aronofsky came along with a project for him. It is no coincidence that he is the same director of “The Wrestler”, the film that revived Mickey Rourke’s career in 2008. Thanks to that film, the director won a Golden Lion. After seeing it by chance in the trailer of a movie by low budget, he proposed to Fraser the role that has given him his own claim as an artist. In “The Whale,” Charlie is a 500-pound English teacher whose only connection to the outside world is the classes he teaches online. Ever since he lost his boyfriend, depression has overcome him. He has only one wish: to rebuild his relationship with his teenage daughter, played by Sadie Sink, (Max, in “Stranger Things”).

It had taken Aronofsky 10 years to make the movie, simply because he couldn’t find Charlie. “I considered everyone: all kinds of different actors, every movie star on the planet. But none of them really clicked. It just didn’t move me, nor did it feel right. A couple of years ago, I saw a trailer for a low-budget Brazilian movie, and I saw Brendan there and a light bulb went on. He hadn’t seen “Gods and Monsters” or “George of the Jungle.” Seeing him there, he just clicked. I asked Brendan to come meet me…he just kept clicking,” Aronofsky said.

“I had to learn to move in a new way, I developed muscles that I didn’t know I had, I felt dizzy at the end of the day when they took off my prosthesis because of an undulating sensation like when you get off a gondola in Venice,” the actor said. For him, Charlie has been “a ray of light in a dark place.” It is worth mentioning that, in addition to the fact that Fraser gained weight, several prostheses were necessary to increase the feeling of obesity.

Today, Fraser already plans to continue with his dream “come back”: he will participate in Killers of the Flower Moon, the new Martin Scorsese film that will also have Jesse Plemons and will bring together his two fetish actors: Robert De Niro and Leonardo Di Caprio. Fraser returns to the major leagues.

The man who was George de la Selva or Rick O’Connell from The Mummy, has given a pre-eminent place in his filmography to the character who today has consecrated him with his first Oscar award. “By far, I think Charlie is the most heroic man I’ve ever played, because his super power is to see the good in others and bring it out in him.”

In light of the facts, it’s the same super power that Brendan Fraser has in real life. That and to have become one of the undeniably most beloved actors in Hollywood. One who, despite his abuse, stigmatization, depression and physical problems, has managed to come back, even stronger than before.