At the 2022 Venice International Film Festival held at Lido di Venezia, Brendan Fraser received a standing ovation for 6 minutes and 30 seconds. As much as his humble nature wanted him to, Fraser couldn’t find an escape out of the theatre that resoundingly showered him with love and veneration. The event officially marks the comeback of The Mummy actor into Hollywood, after the latter shunned him onto the sidelines for almost 20 years.
The Stranger Things favorite, Sadie Sink features alongside Brendan Fraser in the award-winning director, Darren Aronofsky‘s film, The Whale which marks yet another brilliant success for Aronofsky after Black Swan, if early critic reports are to be believed.
Brendan Fraser Gets Welcomed Back With Loving Arms
The actor who lost almost everything because those in power wanted to silence him and who was too good to fight back finally had his day and, oh, what a comeback it was! Brendan Fraser was the blue-eyed icon loved by ages young and old in the Hollywood of the ’90s. As quick as his meteoric rise was, a decade later it would take a simple encounter at a hotel lobby to have it all come crashing down.
In the summer of 2003, the organizers of the annual Golden Globes, i.e. the Hollywood Foreign Press Association had accumulated in the Beverly Hills Hotel. Its then-President, Philip Berk noticed the wide-eyed Fraser in the gathering, shook his hand, and then sexually assaulted him in the middle of the crowded room while the guests were enjoying luncheon. At the time, the actor didn’t speak out of shock. When he did try to speak, he was shunned from productions and sidelined by the industry. In the years that followed, he succumbed to clinical depression.
A 2018 GQ article published a touching and in-depth interview with the actor about the incident.
Brendan Fraser in Darren Aronofsky’s The Whale
After a harrowing couple of decades spent in silence and oblivion, the actor now finds the world cheering him into the spotlight as it recognizes Brendan Fraser for what he once was and who he was wronged by. Aronofsky provides him with that platform and Fraser gives his everything into the film, proving his worth once again to an undeserving industry. About his performance, the actor said,
“I developed muscles I did not know I had. I even felt a sense of vertigo at the end of the day when all the appliances were removed; it was like stepping off the dock onto a boat in Venice. That [sense of] undulating, it gave me appreciation for those whose bodies are similar. You need to be an incredibly strong person, mentally and physically, to inhabit that physical being.”
The Whale follows a 600-pound gay man, Charlie (Brendan Fraser) who is bound to his wheelchair trying to reconnect with his estranged daughter, Ellie (Sadie Sink). The screenplay for the film has been adapted by Samuel D. Hunter from his 2012 stage production of the same name. The psychological drama has been rated 75% on Rotten Tomatoes and is already hearing calls for Oscar for Brendan Fraser’s performance that a Variety critic has termed “intensely lived-in” and claimed the actor to be “slyer, subtler, more haunting than he has ever been.”
The Whale will premiere theatrically on 9 December 2022.
Source: Variety
