Brendan Fraser's Absence From Hollywood Was Largely Due to His Injuries on Films Like THE MUMMY in the '90s
Brendan Fraser is back on top. After the Venice Film Festival premiere of the actor’s latest big screen appearance in the drama The Whale, which led to a standing ovation and Oscar buzz surrounding his performance, Fraser is in high demand, and fans are happy to welcome him back. Brendan Fraser was my favorite actor when I was growing up.
I loved Encino Man, School Ties, Blast From the Past, and George of the Jungle. Whether Fraser was in a comedy or drama, he always brought such an honesty to each role. He was playful and innocent, and could turn to emotionally raw in whatever the scene required. But sometimes, the role required a lot from him physically, and he ended up paying a steep price for that.
In a 2018 interview with GQ, Fraser talked about his first acting job in a 1991 film called Dogfight, starring River Phoenix and Lili Taylor. He played Sailor #1. He explained:
“They gave me a sailor outfit, along with some other guys, and we did a punch-up scene with some Marines. And I got my Screen Actors Guild card and an extra 50 bucks for the stunt adjustment, ’cause they threw me into a pinball machine. I think I bruised a rib, but I was like: That's okay! I'll take it. I can do it again. If you want, I'll break it. You want me to do it again?”
This was a skill that Fraser could add to his resume, and it stuck. After some of his youthful roles, including playing a caveman, he was cast as Disney’s George of the Jungle, and he describes his character, saying, “I look at myself then and I just see a walking steak.” This let to the 1999 horror-adventure flick, The Mummy, which did fantastic in the box office and kicked off a franchise. But it came at a time when Fraser was taking roles back to back to back, doing his own stunts, and working set to set, and he and the work were both suffering for it.
Fraser said:
“I believe I probably was trying too hard, in a way that's destructive. By the time I did the third Mummy picture in China,” which was 2008, “I was put together with tape and ice—just, like, really nerdy and fetishy about ice packs. Screw-cap ice packs and downhill-mountain-biking pads, 'cause they're small and light and they can fit under your clothes. I was building an exoskeleton for myself daily.”
Eventually all these injuries required multiple surgeries:
“I needed a laminectomy. And the lumbar didn't take, so they had to do it again a year later.” There was a partial knee replacement. Some more work on his back, bolting various compressed spinal pads together. At one point he needed to have his vocal cords repaired. All told, Fraser says, he was in and out of hospitals for almost seven years.
He went on to say, sadly:
“This is gonna really probably be a little saccharine for you. But I felt like the horse from Animal Farm, whose job it was to work and work and work. Orwell wrote a character who was, I think, the proletariat. He worked for the good of the whole, he didn't ask questions, he didn't make trouble until it killed him.… I don't know if I've been sent to the glue factory, but I've felt like I've had to rebuild shit that I've built that got knocked down and do it again for the good of everyone. Whether it hurts you or not.”
The interview goes on to talk about the fact that Fraser’s physical ailments were one major symptom of his absence, while a sexual assault allegation was another. Not one made against him, but one made by him. In 2003, Fraser says he was sexually assaulted by Philip Berk, a former president of the HFPA, at a Hollywood Foreign Press Association luncheon. It took Fraser 15 years to be able to tell his story, similarly to so many other victims.
It’s no wonder he was out of the limelight for so long. I’m glad he was able to work through the physical and mental struggles that he had acquired over the years, and that he’s back making movies for fans to enjoy.