This thinning hair, fat to no neck of the actor, you can recognize who he is?
What if you change two more photos?
That’s right, he is the actor Brendan Fraser, who was a Hollywood sensation and starred in the ‘George of the Jungle’ and ‘The Mummy’ series.
Recently, he returned to the audience’s attention with the new film ‘The Whale’ starring him. The film has a good reputation, with a score of 9.2 on IMDb and a freshness of 79% on Rotten Tomatoes.
The new film, produced by A24 and directed by Darren Aronofsky, director of ‘Black Swan’ and ‘The Wrestler,’ premiered at this year’s Venice International Film Festival and received six minutes of applause from the entire audience. After the premiere at this year’s Venice International Film Festival, it received six minutes of applause from the audience.
Brendan Fraser also won the Toronto International Film Festival Performance Tribute Award for this film, and became one of the strong contenders for the Oscar next year.
What has Brendan Fraser gone through, from being a popular “hottie” to a bloated old man? Will Brendan Fraser be able to start a second career this time?
Hollywood handsome male stars
When it comes to Brendan Fraser, the younger fans may already be a bit unfamiliar, in fact, he is a lot of people’s “childhood memories”.
Brendan was born in Indianapolis, Indiana, USA in 1968. After graduating from college, he moved to Hollywood and made his debut in 1991 in ‘Guilty Until Proven Innocent’.
In 1992, Brendan co-starred with Sean Astin and Griffin Paul Griffiny Hasegawa Sho Hasegaware in the comedy film ‘Encino Man’, in which he showed great comedic talent in a small role as a sailor.
His height is 190 centimeters, but the dance is not at all clumsy, but seems very flexible.
In the same year, Brendan starred in the sports movie ‘School Ties’, which was snapped up by many budding Hollywood actors.
The film’s cast is luxurious, giving him a supporting role of Matt Damon, Chris O’Donnell, Ben Affleck, to today are big names.
But let Brendan really familiar with the public film, to the 1997 Disney live-action version of ‘George of the Jungle’.
The film is based on the U.S. sixties and seventies television cartoon series of the same name.
This period of his, indeed, can be described as “outstanding face”, the deep charming blue eyes, long flowing wild hair, coupled with the eight-pack abs body, charmed many female viewers.
Brendan said in a 2018 magazine interview, “I was looking at my body and it all felt like a walking steak.”
The film grossed $170 million worldwide that year, and he quickly entered the ranks of Hollywood’s leading stars with this film.
After Brendan became popular, good resources came one after another.
In 1998, he starred in ‘Gods and Monsters’, where he starred alongside Ian McKellen. 1999-2008 saw Brendan at the peak of his career – ‘The Mummy ‘ series trilogy.
The first ‘The Mummy’ was a huge success, the film’s action design and special effects were of the highest standard in those days.
In the film Brendan played the explorer O’Connell, with a head of long, diagonal bangs, the whole process without taking off a piece of clothing, but also the testosterone overflowing out of the silver screen.
In this play Brendan and Rachel Weisz to form the screen CP, although it is the hero to save the beauty of the clichéd plot, but the character portrayal is simple and powerful, still very worth watching.
The first ‘The Mummy’ hit a worldwide box office of $410 million and made Brendan one of the biggest male stars in Hollywood at the time.
By the time he starred in the sequel ‘The Mummy Returns’ in 2001, his fee had risen from $4 million to $12 million, which was a pretty impressive figure 20 years ago.
Besides acting in Hollywood commercial blockbusters, Brendan is also exploring new theatrical paths, and in 2004 he acted in the movie ‘Crash’.
The film had won the 78th Academy Awards for Best Picture over the more famous ‘Brokeback Mountain’.
Injuries, Sexual Assault and Life’s Lows
Brendan had a good life until the age of 30, but the turning point was hidden at the peak of his career. 2008 saw the release of three films in a row – ‘The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor’, ‘Journey to the Center of the Earth’ and ‘Inkheart’. ‘, ‘Journey to the Center of the Earth’ and ‘Inkheart’.
This year he did not usher in a career explosion, but encountered an unprecedented downturn.
‘The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor’ places the story in China, with Brendan continuing in the role of O’Connell and joining the Chinese cast of Jet Li, Michelle Yeoh, Isabella Leong and Jing Wu in the lead role.
Although the film still has a global box office of $ 400 million, but the whole film’s Western perspective expression mixed with Chinese elements, the effect is quite awkward, the film’s reputation has also become disastrous.
‘The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor’ starring Isabella Leong, who was 20 years old at the time
This led to Universal Pictures later dropping the ‘The Mummy’ franchise outright and rebooting it in 2017 with ‘The Mummy’ starring Tom Cruise.
However, ‘The Mummy’ is also a word of mouth flop, Universal huge loss of $95 million, directly let the “dark monster universe” plan aborted.
Journey to the Center of the Earth’ was the trend-setting 3D movie of the year, the first one was well received, with a global box office of $244 million, it is reasonable to say that the sequel movie should continue to look for him to shoot.
But because the first film director Eric Brevig, in the sequel was replaced by the film studio, as a good friend of the director Brendan, also fell out with the film studio.
The sequel ‘Journey 2: The Mysterious Island’ starring later replaced Dwayne Johnson, and Johnson’s first film, it is Brendan as the lead role of ‘The Mummy Returns’.
Since 2008, Brendan’s health is very bad, years of intense action scenes make his body suffer from injuries.
When filming ‘The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor’ he insisted on not using a body double as much as possible, even requiring ice to be taped to his body for cold compresses. He spent seven years in and out of hospitals, undergoing surgeries including knee replacements, laminectomies, and surgery to repair his vocal cords.
A hurricane hit the East Coast of the United States in 2012 when Brendan was hit in the back by a tree in his home.
For a long time afterwards, he had to walk with crutches, which also meant that it was difficult for him to do intense physical action. For the action actor, this was certainly a fatal loss.
Even more shockingly, in an interview in 2018 Brendan spoke out about a psychological shadow that had plagued him for years.
It turns out that in the summer of 2003, he was sexually harassed by Philip Baker, the former president of the Hollywood Foreign Press Association, which also hosts Ballon d’Or in the United States.
According to Brendan’s recollection, Baker took advantage of the chaos at the Press Association luncheon to grope his buttocks and put his hand down his pants and groped him.
“I was scared and aggravated, I felt like a little kid, there was like a ball in my throat blocking it, and I thought I was going to cry.”
At that time, Brendan did not choose to call the police, but left the party in anger, which made him unable to let go for a long time.
Although years later, Brendan mustered the courage to file a complaint with the Ballon d’Or Association, the result was a glib letter of apology from Baker that was evasive about his actions.
Brendan did not receive an invitation to Ballon d’Or for many years after 2003. Ironically, it wasn’t until 2021 that Baker was removed from the association for discrimination against blacks, but not for sexual harassment.
His personal life has also been rocky.
In 2007 his wife Afton Smith filed for divorce from him, for which Brendan has to pay up to $900,000 a year in alimony.
In 2013, Brendan went through another round of divorce property battle and even went to court. He asked the judge to lower the exorbitant alimony, but his ex-wife flatly demanded that he conceal his assets and was adamant about not giving in.
With the passage of time, this “handsome actor” began to be abandoned by Hollywood.
The out-of-control face and body, imbalanced physical and mental state, all made him fall into a career low that was difficult to climb out of.
Career rejuvenation
2010 was a tough year for Brendan, with two back-to-back films that failed miserably at the box office.
He and Harrison Ford starred in ‘Extraordinary Measures’, which cost $31 million in return for only $12 million at the box office.
Another film he starred in, ‘Furry Vengeance’, cost $35 million and only recouped $17.5 million at the box office, both of which were listed in Forbes’ Top 10 Money-Losing Bad Movies of the year.
In fact, Brendan starred in a number of previous films, box office fiascoes: 1999’s ‘Dudley Do-Right’, an investment of more than 70 million but less than 10 million at the box office.
But because of the dazzling aura of ‘The Mummy’, people were extra lenient to him, but with the fall of ‘The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor’ in 2008, Brendan Fraser started to be sent to the critics again and again The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor’ fell in 2008, Brendan Fraser began to be repeatedly sent by critics to the “box office poison” bad reviews.
After 2012, his body began to noticeably fatten. In the following years, although he occasionally appeared in film and television dramas, but no longer difficult to receive commercial blockbusters, only to play small roles.
In 2016, Brendan took over the third season of ‘The Affair’, appearing as an obese and belly-busting prison guard, without his former face and body, but his acting skills won him applause instead.
In 2019, he starred in the DC breakout American series ‘Doom Patrol’ as Cliff Steele, the Mecha Man.
In the American drama ‘Trust’, he played the wise and humorous detective Chace with vividness and flexibility.
Speaking of Brendan’s latest film, he stars in ‘Killers of the Flower Moon’, directed by Martin Scorsese, which also stars Leonardo DiCaprio, Robert De Niro and other familiar old faces.
He starred in ‘Batgirl’ last year, which was a $90 million blockbuster, but it was cut by DC before it was released, and it was a bit of bad luck for the lead actor.
In his latest appearance in the new film ‘The Whale’, Brendan plays 600-pound father Charlie, a father who is nearing the end of his life, stubborn and determined to eat himself to death, and only his daughter Ellie, who is estranged from Charlie, is the last hope to save him.
Brendan in the film has been fat to make people dare not recognize, he also needs to bring up to dozens of pounds of latex models for the performance.
At the premiere of ‘The Whale’, Brendan Fraser embraced director Darren Aronofsky, who bowed deeply to the audience.
That handsome look and fit body that once belonged to him will never return, but he is still trying to learn and be a good enough actor.
At this year’s Toronto International Film Festival, Brendan met Michelle Yeoh of ‘The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor’ with whom he had worked.
Now that their new films ‘The Whale’ and ‘Everything Everywhere All at Once’ are both distributed by A24, I wonder if they will win more awards in next year’s awards season?
Related Post: Review of ‘The Whale’.
Related Post: Brendan Fraser is open to returning for a sequel to ‘The Mummy’.
