Brendan Fraser on impostor syndrome: ‘I can’t stop feeling that I’m a fraud’
Brendan Fraser has been in the midst of a significant career revival in the past year or so, a result of a star performance in Darren Aronofsky’s new film The Whale. Fraser had been a big Hollywood name in the 1990s and early 2000s but slipped off the radar somewhat since then.
However, despite his upturn in fortunes, Fraser cannot help but feel like something of a “fraud”. He told NME: “I’m never gonna get that comfortable. And when I do that, I think it’s time to rethink my approach, because I’m always… I can’t get rid of the feeling that someone’s gonna walk in the room and tell me that I’m a fraud, or that I have impostor syndrome.”
It’s quite sad to hear Fraser put himself down, especially as his The Whale performance has received such high critical praise. He added: “They’re gonna hand me a dish-towel and I’ll have to go get back to work. But I hope I never lose that. In a way. Because I’m still not done proving myself yet. And to do that, I need bigger and greater challenges.”
Challenge is the key word when it comes to Fraser’s role in Aronofsky’s new film, as he had to play a morbidly obese man. Discussing the difficulty Fraser faced on set and how he overcame it, Aronofsky noted, “It was incredibly challenging. Just imagine: to bring up the emotions he has to do, bring up the length of dialogue he has to do, while all this crap is glued to your body, and you’re just covered in every way possible.”
He added: “It was an incredible mental feat to be able to perform emotively with that much equipment on him. He won’t say it but that’s the reality of what’s going on.” No wonder Fraser’s part in the film has drawn such praise then, and in no way should he feel like a fraud.
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