Brendan Fraser was once a big Hollywood star, and some of his fans loved
him for his chiseled looks. However, the star disappeared and returned as a
completely different man after experiencing severe life challenges.
Brendan
Fraser joined Hollywood when he got an acting role in "Dogfight" in 1991.
The following year he got his big break on the big screen when he starred in
"Encino Man" and became a film icon in the 1990s.
Some of the roles he's had since included the "The Mummy" franchise
and "George of the Jungle." In 2004, he featured in the movie "Crash," which
starred other big names like Sandra Bullock, Matt Dillon, Don Cheadle, and
Terrence Howard.
The film earned him and his co-stars the Screen Actors Guild
Award (SAG) for Outstanding Performance by a Cast in a Motion Picture.
Fraser was well-known for his good looks, and Premiere magazine once
described him as "a prime specimen of male musculature."
The star
felt his character in "George of the Jungle" was more than what the media
saw. He felt George was complicated, benevolent, a protector of the
innocent, a bumbling defender of the weak, but not a dunderhead.
Brendan Fraser starring in the movie "George of the Jungle" on June
20, 1997.
Being easy on the eyes was a description Fraser added,
seemingly an afterthought about the character he played. The "King of the
Hill" star went on a strict low-carbohydrate, high-protein diet to get in
shape for "George of the Jungle."
He spent six months working out
daily with weights for an hour, and by the end of filming, he'd lost six
percent of his body fat. At the time, Fraser described himself as a "walking
steak."
The actor was so ripped that he volunteered to act out
some of his own stunts. However, doing stunts himself led to a broken bone
when he jammed a toe while wrestling an ape.
His injury cost the filmmakers $1.3 million because they had to
change the schedule to postpone Fraser's running scenes. In February 2018,
the star spoke about how his health deteriorated.
Around 2003, a
"Superman" film written by J. J. Abrams started making its rounds in
Hollywood. Fraser was interested in the significant role, and the studio
wanted him, but he never got to play the part.
It broke his
heart, and he felt ashamed because he thought he "didn't measure up." As the
years went by, the feeling of not being worthy ate at him, and his work
started taking a physical toll on him, causing his body to
deteriorate.
In 2008, when he was filming "The Mummy," he had to be put
together with ice and tape. Eventually, his stunt injuries required multiple
surgeries, like a laminectomy, whose lumbar didn't take.
A year
later, it had to be done again, and he also needed a partial knee
replacement later. Fraser had work done on his back, and once, his vocal
cords had to be repaired, with the star being in and out of hospitals for
nearly seven years.
Fraser faced a severe challenge in his career
in the summer of 2003 while at a luncheon held at the Beverly Hills Hotel,
hosted by the Hollywood Foreign Press Association (HFPA). While on his way
out, he was stopped by Philip Berk.
Berk was the former president
of the HFPA, the organization that hosts the Golden Globes. He reached out
to shake Fraser's hand in a crowded room and, in jest, pinched the actor's
bottom.
However, according to Fraser, it was more than a pinch as he
felt Berk grab his rear. The former HFPA president even moved his fingers
around, leaving the actor feeling panicked and fearful!
Berk
disputed Fraser's version of the events that day, leaving the star depressed
from the alleged sexual assault. The former HFPA president acknowledged
writing a letter to Fraser about the incident, admitted no wrongdoing, but
apologized for upsetting the star.
The HFPA failed to take
serious action on the matter, leading Fraser to pull back from the public
arena. The actor blamed himself for the incident and felt miserable as he
thought he'd deserved the assault.
He ended up retreating and becoming reclusive while he wondered
if the HFPA had blacklisted him. Fraser was rarely invited back to the
Golden Globes after 2003, and Berk denied that the HFPA retaliated against
the star.
After the incident with Berk, Fraser focused his
attention on his family. The actor met Afton Smith in 1993 at a barbeque
thrown by Winona Ryder, and the pair ended up getting married after four
years of dating.
The couple welcomed three children together,
Griffin Arthur, Holden Fletcher, and Leland Francis. Griffin was diagnosed
as autistic, and he was part of the reason why his mother advocated raising
awareness for the disease.
The incident with Berk affected the star so much that it
interfered with his family life, with him confessing, "something had been
taken away from me." The couple filed for divorce, and it was only finalized
in 2009.
In 2015, Ina Treciokas, Fraser's publicist, revealed how
the former couple was doing, stating, "They continue to maintain a close and
caring friendship." However, the divorce took so long to finalize because of
the alimony battle the pair went through.
In June 2017, Fox News alleged that Fraser's career had "taken
a nosedive" and noted how he hadn't "appeared on the big screen" in four
years. In March 2013, he filed legal documents asking to decrease the child
support and alimony payments of $50,000 monthly.
He wanted the
change because he wasn't making the same money annually as before. He
claimed he was "broke," but Smith thought he was lying and a "fraud." She
claimed he was hiding $9 million in new film contracts, which he denied.
After
having disappeared from Hollywood for almost a decade, Fraser started
re-appearing in several television series and movies. In 2021, he featured
in the film "The Whale." Fans were shocked to see how much weight he'd
gained.
However, the truth was that the actor
[Brendan Fraser] was grieving the death of his mother.
A fan
thought the actor had let himself go after "George of the Jungle." However,
the weight gain was caused by having undergone multiple operations
necessitated by the physical strain of his work.
Another notable thing that happened with Fraser was when fans
noticed he seemed sad while giving his first interview in years on AOL's
BUILD YouTube channel. The star spoke in a near whisper in the clip, which
went viral.
Speculation was that the sadness he expressed was
because of his divorce or that two franchises he once appeared in, "Journey
to the Center of the Earth" and "The Mummy," had rebooted without recasting
him.
However, the truth was that the actor was grieving the death of
his mother. Fraser was now back into acting full-time, working on filming
DC's "Batgirl" in 2021/22 movie, and in September 2021, he released an
emotional TikTok video.
In the clip, he was seen "choking up"
after seeing a viral video of a fan supporting the revival of his acting
career, saying everyone was "rooting" for him. The star also regularly sees
his children, who live with his ex-wife.
