Brendan Fraser was a heartthrob in his The Mummy days. The actor starred as Rick O’Connell in the 1999 action-adventure film that spawned more films and spinoffs. But nowadays, the actor is far away from those days of protecting the world from Egyptian mummies. Instead, he has just bagged the Best Actor SAG award for his role in The Whale. However, the actor can’t help but reminisce about those times. But not all memories related to the film are good ones, especially because he was close to getting strangled on the sets of the film.
Brendan Fraser Almost Died On The Sets Of The Mummy
During an interview on The Kelly Clarkson Show, Brendan Fraser discussed a scene from The Mummy where he almost got choked out. As per the acclaimed actor, in the sequence, his character, Rick, was supposed to have a rope around his neck. But things went wrong really fast. Fraser said:
“I was standing on my toes like this with the rope and you only got so far to go. Stephen [Sommers, the director] ran over and he said, ‘Hey, it doesn’t really look like your choking. Can you sell it? The camera swooped around and I went up on the toes and the guy holding the rope above me, he pulled it up a little higher and I was stuck on my toes and I had nowhere to go but down.”
Then things started to go from bad to worse. As per the Inkheart actor:
“So he was pulling up and I was going down. And then the next thing I knew, my elbow was in my ear, the world was sideways and there was gravel in my teeth.”
The stunt coordinator was horrified and rushed in to assess the situation. He found Fraser unconscious. But when the actor finally woke up, the coordinator congratulated him since he was in the same club as Mel Gibson. Apparently, the latter actor went through the same thing on the sets of Braveheart. This dumbfounded Fraser, who then said that he just wanted to go back home.
Brendan Fraser Won The SAG Award For Best Actor
Brendan Fraser didn’t go home empty-handed from the 2023 SAG Awards. In fact, he bagged one of the highest awards of the night- the Best Actor one. Fraser won it for playing an obese man, Charlie, in Darren Aronofsky’s The Whale. In his acceptance speech, he said that he will treasure the award given by SAG. Fraser said:
“I will treasure this, but never more than what I treasured, that I used to keep in my wallet, which was my SAG card that I earned in 1991. It made me feel like I belonged. We’re actors; we all want to belong to a tribe. If you told that guy back then I’d be standing here right now, I wouldn’t have believed you.”
The win wasn’t easy. After all, he was up against heavyweights like Colin Farrell for The Banshees of Inisherin, Austin Butler for Elvis, Adam Sandler for Hustle, and Bill Nighy for Living. For Fraser, this win has again revived his chances to bag an Oscar in the same category, even though Farrell and Butler will be giving him tough competition that night.
The Oscars will air on March 12.
Source: Kelly Clarkson Live
