One of the biggest action stars of the 1990s and the early 2000s, Brendan Fraser later faded from public view, leaving fans impatiently expecting his return.
The 1991 picture Dogfight marked the Indiana native’s feature debut, one year before Encino Man and School Ties established him as a heartthrob. In the latter movie, Matt Damon, Ben Affleck, and Chris O Donnell, who, like Fraser, wasn’t yet one of Hollywood’s A-list celebrities.
In September 2022, School Ties director Robert Mandel told Yahoo that the majority of them had done no work at all. Chris had only ever made one movie, but it was a modest, obscure production. Therefore, you were unable to cite a lot of their prior work.
Fraser racked up more acting credits in films like Airheads, Glory Daze, and others before landing the lead role in George of the Jungle, which propelled him to even greater fame. Although the comedy received mixed reviews, the movie was a box office success, and its star became well-known.
In The Mummy, which became a worldwide hit and started a franchise that spanned two sequels, a prequel, and an animated series, theTrustalum cemented himself as an action star two years later. Fraser said to Popverse in September 2022 that filming the 1999 movie on location in Morocco was an actual adventure. There was a certain sense of freedom and exhilaration about it because we had no idea what we were dealing with.
Fraser then widened his filmography with parts in dramas like 2002’s The Quiet American and 2004’s Oscar-winning feature Crash, but as his fame grew, so did problems in his personal life. He and his wife, Afton Smith, announced their separation in 2007.
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As part of the settlement, Fraser was required to make alimony and child support payments totaling $900,000. Three sons—Griffin (born in 2002), Holden (born in 2004), and Leland—were born to the former marriage (born in 2006).
Following his performance as Rick O Connell, however, TheMonkeybonestar’s physical health started to deteriorate. By the time I completed the third mummy photograph in China [in 2008], I had become really nerdy and preoccupied with ice packs, as Fraser admitted to GQ in February 2018. Every day I was constructing an exoskeleton for myself. In the end, TheScrubsalum endured vocal cord surgery, partial knee replacement, and spinal surgery.
Fraser said in the same interview that Philip Berk, a former head of the Hollywood Foreign Press Association, had sexually attacked him in 2003. The alleged encounter made me feel isolated, the Bedazzledstar claimed. Something had been taken away from me, at least in my mind. Berk, on the other hand, referred to Fraser’s statement as complete fiction.
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In the late 2010s, Fraser finally appeared to be on the verge of a comeback or, in the words of his admirers, a Brenaissance. He was cast in Martin Scorsese’s Killers of the Flower Moon and Showtime’s critically praised drama The Affair, and in 2022, his performance in The Whale started to garner Oscar hype.
Regarding his role in the Darren Aronofsky movie, Fraser told Vanity Fair in August 2022 that this was a fantastic chance. I yearned to blend into it. I wanted to change so much that no one would recognize me.