Brendan Fraser has made headlines again by relaunching his career with 'The Whale', by Darren Aronofsky. However, he had very important reasons for being missing for years.
Brendan Fraser has been one of the most popular names at the Venice Festival, where he has presented his next film: 'The Whale', by Darren Aronofsky. In it he plays Charlie, a morbidly obese man who tries to rebuild his life and his relationship with his daughter after many years of wasting away.
This performance earned him a long ovation during his performance, which he received excitedly and without being able to leave the auditorium, and the actor is already being talked about even for the Oscars. A success that comes after a long break in his career with minor roles.
As he told GQ at the time, he had his reasons for this, after going through a period of fame in the 2000s thanks to productions like 'The Mummy' or 'George of the Jungle', where he dispensed with action doubles. A way of working that ended up taking its toll on him: "I was making an effort in a way that was destructive to me."
"I had to build an exoskeleton for myself every day. By the time I shot the third part of 'The Mummy' ('Tomb of the Dragon Emperor'), they had to rebuild me with duct tape and ice," Fraser recalled. This situation made him undergo surgery several times, without being able to fully dedicate himself to any filming: "They performed a laminectomy on me and the first operation did not go well, it had to be repeated."
Personally, he also experienced hard times over the course of a decade: "I moved house, I got divorced, my children grew up... events that shape you in a way that you are never prepared for until they arrive." But the alarm bells went off in 2016 for his fans, when they saw him interviewed on a YouTube channel, visibly sad and embarrassed, promoting the series 'The Affair', where he had a testimonial role. As he later said, it was also due to personal situations: "I had just buried my mother and I think she was still processing it."
To everything he had experienced in those 10 years, for Fraser, there was added controversy over a situation of harassment that Philip Berk, former president of the Hollywood Foreign Press Association, the organization that celebrates the Golden Globes, put him through. Episode which occurred in 2003 and caused him a great depression, as Fraser told it some time later: "He put his left hand behind me, grabbed my buttock and one of his fingers reached my anus. And then he started to move it. I started bad. I felt like a child with a lump in my throat."
Something that Berk has flatly denied, but, without a doubt, the controversy was another of the triggers for Fraser to hide from the spotlight and spend a few years without being seen: "I didn't want to relive what that made me feel, nor did I want became part of my narrative"
Although his stellar moment at the Mostra was during the screening of 'The Whale', Fraser has also enchanted the press at the Venice Festival by responding to a journalist who reminded him of one of his most emblematic roles: "I hope your son was safe playing 'George of the Jungle'. Many parents in all these years have also told me 'good movie, my children love it, but I hate you because now they have 8 points.'
With a smile, the actor has also referred to the moment his career is going through right now and has joked about his change in appearance: "I looked different those days. My journey to be where I am now has been to explore how many characters I have been able to".
And he has especially highlighted the character he plays in 'The Whale': "For me Charlie is the most heroic character I have ever played because his superpower is seeing the good in others, and getting that out of them, in their process of salvation".
