Brendan Fraser recalls a scene from Furry Vengeance that made him rethink his acting career. Once one of Hollywood's premier leading men known for his role as Rick O'Connell in The Mummy trilogy (1999–2008), Fraser's film work slowed during the 2010s due to health problems, personal losses, and the fallout from his sexual assault allegation against the former president of the Hollywood Foreign Press Association, Philip Berk. Over the past few years, Fraser's return to acting (dubbed "The Brenaissance") which continues with his Oscar-worthy performance in The Whale, has been a comeback story for the ages.
Fraser recently appeared on The Hollywood Reporter's Actors Roundtable series alongside esteemed performers such as Austin Butler, Colin Farrell, and Adam Sandler. During the candid discussion, Fraser revealed the precise moment he decided to step back from the movie business, which was filming a scene for the universally panned 2010 film Furry Vengeance which involved a porta-potty inverting with the actor inside. The moment forced him to rethink his priorities and the stories he wanted to tell on screen. Read what Fraser said below:
I think it was the night that I was shooting a scene wherein I was being mauled by a bear and I was in a porta potty and the porta potty got inverted and I was on my head and all this Gatorade and stuff dropped on my head and it made me have a conversation with myself really quick about, "Is this worth it?" Maybe I should reprioritize myself and stop working with animals. Look, I stepped back for reasons that include that I had some chips and things in the paint and the business had changed a lot to the way that films were being made lost its wow factor because anything you can imagine and as you well know we saw from Everything Everywhere All At Once, if you could think it up it can be done, but I knew that it was time to hang on to the dream, but I had to grow back into it, get back to the real hunger that I had to tell stories, to have the time to think about it and come back and from a place of wanting to care about stories that I was going to make or you'd be lucky enough to be included became important to me again.
2022 Was A Huge Year For Brendan Fraser's Career
After returning from an acting hiatus, Fraser revived his career by taking various television roles in The Affair, Trust, and Doom Patrol. However, Fraser's film career wasn't fully revitalized until his appearance in Steven Soderbergh's No Sudden Move. From there, 2022 marked the most critical milestone in Fraser's comeback when he starred in Darren Aronofsky's The Whale as a morbidly obese man who attempts to reconnect with his estranged teenage daughter, played by Stranger Things star Sadie Sink.
Fraser's moving performance in The Whale received a six-minute standing ovation when the film premiered at Venice International Film Festival, prompting an emotional reaction from Fraser that went viral online. The performance has also earned widespread critical acclaim, with Fraser receiving his first Golden Globe nomination and is a lock to receive his first Oscar nod. His biggest competition for the Actor in a Leading Role Oscar is seated around him on THR's roundtable, including Colin Farrell for The Banshees of Inisherin and Austin Butler for Elvis.
What's Next For Brendan Fraser?
While many consider it the best performance of his career, The Whale might be the beginning of Fraser's comeback. He also has an exciting supporting role in Martin Scorsese's Killers of the Flower Moon alongside Leonardo DiCaprio and Robert De Niro, which will likely premiere this year at the prestigious Cannes Film Festival. After that, Fraser has another supporting role in the comedy Brothers, starring Josh Brolin and Peter Dinklage as the titular siblings. This should be enough to ensure the "Brenaissance" continues for years, and Fraser forgets about flops like Furry Vengeance.
Source: THR