The director who gave Brendan Fraser a masterclass in cinema: “It was eye opening”
Comebacks are ten-a-penny in the film industry. It can be easy to get cynical about big stars ‘fighting their demons’ to make their big returns, but few resurgences have been quite as wholesome and deserved as that of Brendan Fraser. Once a star with the world at his feet, Fraser’s career and life took a major downturn following an alleged sexual assault by Philip Berk, president of the Hollywood Foreign Press Association.
He captured everyone’s attention with his portrayal of a morbidly obese man in Darren Aronofsky’s The Whale. Despite initial criticism surrounding his decision to wear a fat suit, fans and critics alike warmed to Fraser’s involved and vulnerable performance. He was showered with awards, including the Academy Award for ‘Best Actor’. An astonishing feat for someone who, less than a decade earlier, had been voicing an animated squirrel in a sub-par children’s movie.
Once you’re acknowledged as the best actor of a particular season, the big directors tend to come calling. Fraser’s next movie after The Whale was Martin Scorsese’s bum-numbing Native American drama Killers of the Flower Moon. He plays W S Hamilton, the lawyer for Robert De Niro’s William ‘King’ Hale, the villain of the piece. He isn’t in the movie for very long, but he was still a part of a picture that was once again heralded as one of the best of the year by various critical outlets.
For Fraser, this project wasn’t about winning more awards. It was about getting the chance to work with one of the greats. “It was eye opening and an education really, a masterclass working with Martin Scorsese on Killers of the Flower Moon,” he told The Talks. “That talent! Of course, you are in the presence of a master, working with him. It’s like a shop where everyone around him brings him the tools and the things he needs.”
Scorsese wasn’t the only world-class talent on the set of the movie, which is based on a real-life saga of marriage and murder among the Osage Nation. Alongside the aforementioned De Niro, Fraser also shared the lot with Leonardo DiCaprio, John Lithgow, Jesse Plemons, Lily Gladstone, and, for some reason, Jack White. Getting to share the bill with names of this stature only cemented Fraser’s status as the newest member of the acting elite. Having a featured role in two back-to-back awards darlings will do wonders for your profile.
The American-born Canadian hasn’t been completely lost to the glitz and glamour of Hollywood, however. His next movie after Killers of the Flower Moon was Brothers, an Amazon Prime comedy from the director of Palm Springs. He currently has two projects in the pipeline: comedy drama Rental Family by Japanese director Hikari, and Pressure, in which he will play US President Dwight D Eisenhower opposite Andrew Scott. Despite having fallen in with the likes of Scorsese, Aronofsky, and Steven Soderbergh — he appeared in Soderbergh’s 2021 film No Sudden Move prior to The Whale — Fraser clearly hasn’t been put off working with smaller names.
Not only has Fraser managed to shake off the turmoil of his recent past, but he’s managed to totally reinvent himself in the public eye. Most actors would give an arm and a leg to experience this sort of career transformation. It couldn’t have happened to a nicer guy.
