Brendan Fraser sits down at Megacon, having a Q&A with fans. He has only recently returned to the public eye after talk openly about her depression and the sexual abuse she suffered being an actor, and he still doesn’t know what he’s going to find. A girl walks up to the microphone and says, “First of all, I just want to thank you for sharing your stories. I know a lot of people, myself included, are survivors, and watching you talk about it has been one of the most inspiring things I’ve ever seen in my life.” Fraser begins to cry as he smiles.
The brightest star in the universe
53 years ago, in Indianapolis, Brendan James Fraser was born as the fruit of the marriage between a sales consultant and a journalist. Nothing seems to presage that three decades later he would be the world’s best-known adventure hero. It was not easy: after studying acting in New York, she stopped in Hollywood to try to break into the world of cinema with 23 years. For trying, that does not stay.
His first movie was a bodriete direct to television: ‘Child of darkness, child of light’ was about two virgin births at the same time. One would give birth to the son of god and another to the son of Satan. take it now His second movie did make it to theaters, but he was called “Brendon” Fraser in the credits. It didn’t look good for this aspiring actor: All his films, including ‘Airheads’, where he shared the poster with Steve Buscemi, Adam Sandler and Chris Farley, sank at the box office.
Somehow, Fraser fell for a very silly animated series adaptation, and became the one and only ‘George of the Jungle’, who became a more or less unexpected success and propelled his career. After gaining critical prestige with his fabulous ‘Gods and Monsters’, it was time to meet the real monsters. In 1999, Rick O’Connell was born. in ‘The Mummy’.
rise and fall
Everybody loved Brendan Fraser! Yes you lived in the late ’90s and early ’00s, you know he was such an icon. He was in everything: the two sequels to ‘The Mummy,’ ‘To hell with the devil,’ ‘Looney Tunes: Back in Action’ (the good live-action movie of the characters), and he even had time to play Ben, one of the most unforgettable episodic characters in ‘Scrubs’. And if you remember him, you are crying right now.
But while his professional life was going up, his personal life was falling apart. In 2003, during a dinner at the Hollywood International Press Association, Philip Berk, the president, got his hands on it. Fifteen years later he would say “Am I still afraid? Absolutely. Do I feel like I should say something? Absolutely. Have I wanted to do it many, many times? Absolutely. Have I stopped myself? Absolutely.” Berk denied everything.
At the same time, so many action scenes began to cause damage to the body. His injuries turned into operations, the operations into continuous hospital visits for seven years. His career went down the toilet, Hollywood became an increasingly distant dream (although he has always claimed that he had nothing to do with Berk’s sexual abuse) and, at the same time, in 2007, the marriage with Afton Smith turned into an expensive divorce: each month he was to give her $75,000, something that, without work, soon became impossible. No marriage, no career and full of wounds. The final push into depression was the death of his mother, Carol Mary Fraser.
Brendan Fraser is back!
Fraser’s television and film appearances were increasingly reduced to very little influential products while working to move on: “I blamed myself and felt miserable, because he was saying ‘This is nothing: this guy came up and groped me’. That summer passed, and I can’t remember what I did for work afterwards.”
Before his interview in GQ on February 22, 2018 where he revealed the reason for his public disappearance for almost a decade, his career did not go beyond punctual appearances in series like ‘The affair’ and movies of very low interest. Later, he began to chain new roles: he was the protagonist of ‘Condor’, the series based on ‘The three days of the Condor’, he had a role in ‘Doom patrol’ and directors like Darren Aronofsky or Martin Scorsese looked at him for their next films. Because nothing loves Hollywood more than a happy homecoming story.
Brendan Fraser may never step into Rick O’Connell’s shoes again, nor does he need to. Now, years after his depression, he is more grateful than ever and returns to being what he should never have stopped being: a star. The public that loves him, the producers adore him, public opinion is overturned. After the six minutes of applause in Venice after the screening of ‘The whale’, it is clear that she has returned, in an age of gossip and bad-mouth actors, as the image of decency and gratitudewith the face of someone who has survived and is willing to move on.