Hotly tipped to win Best Actor at this year’s Academy Awards, Brendan Fraser’s thirty-year career has spanned genres, celebrated successes and weathered failures. David Michael Brown looks back at Fraser’s flicks.
From stoner comedy king to arthouse darling with a blockbuster pit stop for good measure, the rollercoaster career trajectory of Brendan Fraser has been nothing but varied. And now he is getting the best notices of his career and Oscar recognition for his transformative performance in Darren Aronofsky’s The Whale.
The Requiem for a Dream director has already resurrected Mickey Rourke’s career with The Wrestler (2008) and given Natalie Portman her Oscar for Black Swan (2010) and now, as Fraser gives his all under layers of latex, it looks like the visionary director could do both for the caveman from Encino. And that’s not all. Next, Fraser will be sharing the screen with Leonardo DiCaprio and Robert De Niro in Martin Scorsese’s Killers of the Flower Moon.
Ladies and gentlemen! Welcome to the so-called Brenaissance!
It was Encino Man in 1992 that kick-started Fraser’s career in comedy. He played a caveman who had been put on ice since the Stone Age. That is until two high school dropouts, played by Sean Astin and Pauly Shore, dig him up in their backyard and decide to defrost him. A classic fish-out-of-water comedy, the first of many for the comedian, as “Link” discovers modern life and in turn, turns the two zeroes into heroes.
Fraser’s likeable combination of good looks, laid-back bonhomie and willingness to show a daffy side behind those soulful blue eyes, ensured that subsequent comedies, including the metalhead mirth of Airheads, with Adam Sandler and Steve Buscemi, and George of the Jungle, saw Fraser’s inherent affability win over audiences. Based on the popular animated show of the ‘60s that in turn spoofed Edgar Rice Burroughs’s Tarzan, the swinging jungle comedy may have seen Fraser get upstaged by his pet elephant, but he is never afraid to poke fun at himself. Especially when using ape courting rituals to win the heart of Leslie Mann’s lost in the jungle heiress.
Gods and Monsters
It was sharing the screen with Sir Ian McKellen in Bill Condon’s Gods and Monsters in 1998 that changed the public’s perception of the actor as he offered a more serious side. Yes, Fraser had already shown off his chops in coming-of-age prejudice drama School Ties in 1992 with Matt Damon, Ben Affleck and Chris O’Donnell, but director Bill Condon’s speculative exploration of the final days of filmmaker James Whale saw Fraser give a raw and open performance.
The Frankenstein and Bride of Frankenstein director was brazenly open about his sexuality which made his friendship with Whale’s handsome young gardener Clayton Boone (Fraser) all the more strained. Fraser’s luddite ex-marine is shocked but allured by Whale’s untouchable lifestyle. Beautifully crafted, especially the recreations of the classic Universal monster movies that made Whale’s name, and exquisitely performed by Fraser, McKellen and Lynn Redgrave, Gods and Monsters saw Condon win an Oscar for his script and Fraser take an important step towards more challenging material.
Blast from the Past
1999 was a huge year for the actor. Rom-com Blast From the Past saw the actor trade on his tried-and-tested amiable funny guy love interest persona as he teamed up with another much-loved figure from the ‘90s comedy scene, Clueless star Alicia Silverstone. The cute romance once again saw Fraser playing a naive outsider, this time having just walked out of a nuclear fallout shelter straight onto the neon streets of ’90s Downtown Los Angeles. Christopher Walken and Sissy Spacek play his terrified parents who locked up their family during the 1950s Cuban Missile Crisis.
The Mummy (1999)
Stephen Sommers’ The Mummy, released the same year, saw Fraser hit box office gold. A rip-roaring boys’ own adventure that fused historical horrors with Indiana Jones-style archaeological heroics, Fraser cranked up the rugged charisma in the CGI-saturated actioner. Starring opposite Rachel Weisz, who played Evelyn Carnahan, Fraser took on the role of Rick O’Connell with gusto. The 1920s American adventurer becomes involved with the librarian and aspiring Egyptologist when he discovers the location of Hamunaptra, the city of the dead.
In a desert storm of flesh-eating beetles and more Industrial Light & Magic sand FX than you can shake a bucket and spade at, it’s Fraser and his sparky onscreen relationship with Weisz that shines through as they battle undead high priest Imhotep (Arnold Vosloo) and his badly bandaged desiccated henchmen.
Fraser’s winning charm did not save every film he has appeared in. Slapstick comedy flop Dudley Do-Right (1999) promised Canadian Mountie mayhem but was a massive box-office flop. Bedazzled, the ill-fated 2000 remake of the ‘60s Peter Cooke and Dudley Moore vehicle co-starring Raquel Welch and Barry Humphries, saw a wooden Elizabeth Hurley play the devil and a struggling Fraser as the unlucky-in-love dweeb Elliot— who makes a deal with the devil to win the heart of the love of his life, played by Francis O’Connor. The devilish gags fizzled on screen and the film was a critical bomb.
Monkeybone
Henry Selick’s bonkers Monkeybone (2001) may have fused stop-motion animation with live action to brilliant effect, but cinemagoers didn’t tune in to the director’s askew vision. Even Looney Tunes: Back in Action (2003), directed by Gremlins helmer Joe Dante and featuring Fraser alongside Bugs Bunny, Daffy Duck, Road Runner and the rest of the animated WB gang, failed to draw the classic cartoon characters a modern-day audience.
The Quiet American
Luckily movies like Philip Noyce’s The Quiet American (2002) with Michael Caine, the Oscar-winning Crash (2004) and a slew of blockbusters like Journey to the Centre of the Earth (2008) followed as Fraser proved himself to be a leading man of charismatic aplomb. The Mummy Returns reunited him with Weisz and fellow Mummy co-star John Hannah along with The Rock who joined the franchise as the Scorpion King. He also starred against Michelle Yeoh in the third instalment The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor. In fact, he emerged from the films battered and bruised, “By the time I did the third Mummy picture in China,” he told GQ in 2018:“I was put together with tape and ice.”
His injuries and subsequent surgeries, in conjunction with a painful divorce and his sexual assault claim against former Hollywood Foreign Press Association president Philip Berk, led to depression and assertions that he had been “blacklisted” by Hollywood. He certainly took a step out of the limelight which is why many hail The Whale as a huge comeback. However, it’s not as though Fraser had vanished from our screens. While he hasn’t bothered the cinematic mainstream for a decade, he has regularly appeared on television shows including Doom Patrol, Texas Rising and Condor. All he needed to do was land a role that would remind us all why we have always loved Brendan Fraser.
The Whale (2022)
And Charlie in Aronofsky’s stunning adaptation of Samuel D. Hunter’s play of the same name, The Whale, is that role. Under a mountain of prosthetics, Fraser is almost unrecognisable as the obese teacher who hides behind his “broken” camera when talking to his students online. The only light in his sad dingy world is his best friend Liz, the brilliant Hong Chau. On a grotesque downward spiral of junk food and self-loathing, he is desperately trying to reconnect with his angry estranged daughter (Stranger Things star Sadie Sink) before the inevitable happens. You can see the desperation and panic in Charlie’s eyes. In one of the film’s most devastating scenes, Charlie pleads, “I need to know that I have done one right thing with my life!” Looking back at his career, Brendan has certainly done that. Many times over.
