What happened to Brendan Fraser after the success of 'The Mummy'

The '90s were Brendan Fraser's. The actor became one of the public's favorite stars of the decade thanks to films like The Mummy and George of the Jungle, but the arrival of the new century did not sit well with him. The story of a sexual abuse, the physical problems resulting from the demands of him on the set, the bad decisions in his work... And from there to the disappearance of the front line of Hollywood.

Fraser proved with Private School in 1992 that he was playing in the league of the most promising young actors of the decade. Accompanied by Matt Damon, Chris O'Donnell and Ben Affleck, he left his mark while waiting for the film that would launch him to stardom in the United States: The Man from California. In it he played a caveman who appears in the modern world when the block of ice on which he has survived for thousands of years melts. There he made clear his incredible comedic vision and also certain acting skills, qualities that would serve him for the films with which he would conquer the international public, between tropical jungles and Egyptian tombs. Especially this last one: The Mummy, besides being the saga that lasted the longest for Fraser, one of the best movies of the 90s. And one of the best adventure movies of all time.

Now that Brendan Fraser is experiencing a well-deserved renaissance, we review what happened in his life after this cinematic bombshell and why his time has come to shine again.

The story of an attack

Although it would take more than a decade to find out that Brendan Fraser had been the victim of an assault within Hollywood, the same actor places it as a certain origin of his problems. The first time he spoke publicly about it was in an interview with GQ magazine, where he said that, in the summer of 2003, at the Beverly Hills Hotel, he suffered abuse by the then president of the Hollywood Foreign Association ( HFPA), the entity that organizes the Golden Globes. Philip Berk, in the middle of a packed room, approached Fraser to shake his hand. But then he grabbed her butt. This is what Berk himself confesses in his memoirs, but Fraser assured years later that it was much more than what he admitted: "His left hand reached out, grabbed my buttock and one of his fingers touched my perineum. And he began to move it" .

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Fraser says that at that moment he was overcome with panic and fear. He finally he was able, he reminded himself, to remove Berk's hand. "I felt sick. I felt like a little child. I felt like I had a lump in my throat. I thought I was going to cry," he told GQ. For years she hid it for the same reasons that many victims of abuse remain silent: for fear of not being believed, for shame, for feelings of guilt, for the rejection of the event being part of their narrative in the case especially that be public figures... All this also applies to the actor.

"I got depressed," he confessed. "I blamed myself and I was miserable, because I was like, 'This is nothing; this guy reached out and felt around a bit.' That summer passed, and I can't remember what I went to work on next." Indeed, as Fraser has confessed, the event took its toll on him. He made him seclude himself, close ranks. He felt "the deafening silence" of the HFPA and felt small. And alone, very alone. This was one of the first stones in a path full of obstacles for the actor.

Bad decisions and a body on the edge

What followed the abuse was a slow and painful self-destruction caused by various factors. For starters, you can't come out of a decade of success like the '90s for Fraser and not desperately try to ride the crest of the wave. But the 2000s were another story for the actor, who took refuge in sequels (although, beware, The Mummy Returns is wonderful) and low-class movies, such as To hell with the devil (2000), Dudley of the mountain (2000) or Looney Tunes: Back in Action (2003). In 2008 alone, he made up to three attempts to recover the lost success: with a third (and disastrous) installment of The Mummy, with a revitalized classic like Journey to the Center of the Earth (which had a sequel for which he was never called back) and with an adaptation of a literary success with Corazón detín. All, to a greater or lesser extent, a failure. Even when he managed to be in an Oscar-winning movie, Crash, it turns out that he has gone down in history as the worst and most undeserved winner of all time. Of course, luck was not on his side.

"I think I was probably trying too hard, in a destructive way," Fraser told GQ. He may have been referring in part to "striving" trying to find a new hit, but in the same interview we discover that he is also speaking in a literal, physical way. All these adventures on the big screen were taking their toll. The actor was a man of considerable size who performed stunts of all kinds on the set. "By the time I did the third Mummy in China movie, I had to be held together with duct tape and ice," he recalled. "I needed screw-top ice packs and mountain biking pads, because they are small and light and can fit under clothes... I was building an exoskeleton for myself every day," he added, recounting a real physical hell he experienced. It ended up costing him many visits to the operating room: a laminectomy, a lower back, a partial knee replacement, a back operation, a vocal cord repair... In total, the actor assured, he was in and out of hospitals for almost seven years .

All this coincided with those years in which we thought he had disappeared. He continued to work here and there, but in films that were not very relevant and that were practically invisible to the public. Hence the question that did not stop repeating itself in the years after 2010: what has become of Brendan Fraser? It is true that sometimes it seems that Hollywood stars take a couple of sabbatical years and the viewers already give them up for dead, but in the case of Fraser there really was a turning point in these years. Luckily, his revival was just around the corner.

The Rebirth: From Meme to Hero

Brendan Fraser has not only had to deal with those ambitious productions that did not work out and with the fact that the phone stopped ringing, but also with a physical change that did not go unnoticed. Installed in the 90s cultural imaginary as the handsome and athletic George of the Jungle or Rick from The Mummy, his new introduction to the world was shocking to many who had not been following him closely. And to top it off, there were social networks, which shared his new look in every corner of the internet. Now the question was no longer "What happened to Brendan Fraser?" but "What the hell happened to Brendan Fraser?".

The first reunion that went viral was in an interview, the first that the actor gave in years, broadcast on the YouTube channel BUILD Series. A deteriorated appearance, having gained weight, a completely broken voice, very uncomfortable gestures... What was happening with the actor? As he himself recounted a few years later, in that interview he brought together having lost practice with the media and, also, the very recent death of his mother from cancer. At that time he was promoting the third season of the series The Affair, in which he only appeared for a few episodes in 2016.

The series that really started its renaissance was Trust, created by Danny Boyle and Simon Beaufoy, which revolves around the 1973 kidnapping of John Paul Getty III by the Italian mob. "It's satisfying to have taken time off for a variety of reasons. and to be under the wing of so many amazing creative people again, it gave me a sense of, I don't want to call it 'achievement,' but more of a sense of relief knowing the load I was carrying on these broad shoulders," he said in an interview with Vanity Fair promoting the series in 2018. Something had changed in him: he gained confidence with the media and began to shine as an actor again. He might have a slightly different appearance, but his charisma hadn't disappeared at all. He also starred in television's Doom Patrol, which has become a cult series.

Now, Brendan Fraser has returned to the movies. And all the way up. He is one of the leads in No Sudden Move, the new film by Steven Soderbergh, along with Don Cheadle, Benicio del Toro, David Harbour, Jon Hamm and Matt Damon. It's a heist thriller set in 1950s Detroit where a group of petty criminals are hired for a mission that turns out to be booby-trapped. This work will be followed by two of the most anticipated films of 2022: The Whale by Darren Aronofsky, where he will play a man weighing more than 200 kg who lies in a bathtub eating compulsively, and Killers of the Flower Moon by Martin Scorsese, in which he will share a cast with Robert De Niro, Leonardo DiCaprio and Jesse Plemons in a criminal thriller with touches of western and the Scorsesian stamp. As if the prestige films weren't enough, Fraser will also cross over to the superhero world playing the villainous Firefly in Batgirl, a DC Comics movie starring Leslie Grace. Can Brendan Fraser be the star of 2022?

Knowing how humble he always is in all his public interventions, the actor is sure to be as surprised as many viewers. In fact, this was demonstrated in an interview that went viral again on social networks, but not for the same reasons as in 2016. During the meeting, the TikTok user LittleLottieCosplay told him: "The Internet supports you a lot. There are people there out that he loves you, and we want the best for you and we can't wait to see what you do". His reaction (remaining silent, as if containing emotion, and giving thanks with his cowboy hat) reminded the world that this was a man who needed redemption with the world but, above all, with himself. And now, as the tiktokera said, we are looking forward to seeing what she has prepared.