The movie Brendan Fraser hated making so much he locked himself in his car and tried to quit
We’ve all had bad days at work: sometimes that evil printer you’re convinced has a personal robotic vendetta against you is playing up again, you’ve spilt curry pot noodle on your new trousers, some bellend has scheduled a two-hour ‘all hands huddle’ later, and you’ve already decided to go straight to bed at 6pm when you’re done. You can put that down to a one-off, but when you’re a movie actor like Brendan Fraser, and you’ve signed on to make a film for months, it’s not that easy to escape.
And for a long time, Fraser didn’t really have much of a choice when it came to the kind of movie he was making; it was a case of take what you can get for the former The Mummy star, who had seen his fame basically vanish after a series of pretty devastating events, not many of which were his fault at all.
At the end of the 1990s and at the start of the new century, Fraser was one of the most bankable actors in Hollywood. The Mummy movies had been huge successes, and he’d made plenty of money in quirky cult comedies like George of the Jungle and Dudley Do-Right. But the next ten years were a catastrophe for him as a combination of divorce, grief, assault and physical issues made working increasingly difficult.
Although he reprised his role in a third Mummy film in 2008, which was still a big hit, Fraser was in the midst of almost two decades of decline when he decided to make a film called Furry Vengeance in 2010. The title of the live-action creature feature alone should probably have given him cause for concern, but he may well have thought it could be a family hit in the vein of some of his earlier films, which did not prove to be the case at all.
The film would end up being universally panned, and it seems Fraser himself realised, albeit too late, that it was one he would come to regret. Even the director, Cruel Intentions’ Roger Kumble, recalled to Fraser in the commentary for the film’s DVD release: “I remember you locked yourself in the car and called your agents to try and get off the picture.”
Unfortunately he was unable to do so, and that period of time would probably have to go down as a nadir for the actor, his Broadway show closed due to bad reviews, a movie he was going to make about William Tell was scrapped and he ended up playing an Elvis impersonator in a comedy called Pawn Shop Chronicles that made all of $10k at the box office.
Fraser struggled on and did make some TV appearances over the next seven years or so, but it was undoubtedly his casting as the lead in The Whale by Steven Soderbergh that finally saw a change in fortunes, and in (literally) a big way. Going completely against type, Fraser played a morbidly obese English teacher to incredible effect, collecting an Oscar for ‘Best Actor’ and a Golden Globe nomination to boot, the movie proving to be a global hit and totally rejuvenating Fraser’s career.
Among other projects, he’s now about to be seen in the WW2 drama Pressure, a film about a wartime meteorologist who has to decide if the D-Day landings can go ahead or if it’ll be too rainy. Let’s hope it’s more exciting than it sounds, or Fraser will end up back in the car.
