Brendan Fraser Breaks Down His Career, from 'The Mummy' to 'The Whale'

It was a risk, and I think I learned that I like that.

You should feel a little bit of uncomfortableness.

You should feel a little bit of, I don't know,

calculated danger, you know?

That's what acting is about.

It's about taking chances.

You're gonna fall down.

The way you get up, how do you get,

all that, that all played in,

and I decided, Yeah, I'm gonna get on board with this.

[gentle music]

Hello, I'm Brendan Fraser,

and this is the timeline of my career.

[gentle music continues]

Thanks for the lift, Coach.

I'll get your bag.

I borrowed my mom's car

to travel down the coast to Los Angeles.

And, shortly thereafter,

I wound up on a movie called School Ties.

So where you from, Greene?

Scranton, PA.

Scranton?

That's, like, in America, Connors.

No shit.

So, you know, you're the very first ringer

St. Matt's ever hired.

Hey, Dillon.

No, he is.

That's something of an honor.

Aren't you honored, Greene?

I hadn't really thought about it.

I'd come from background, theater,

and everything I did was, you know, for the last row.

And I saw that Matt had this uncanny ability

to handle dialogue as if, as he spoke it,

it sounded like he had written it.

And he had an energy level

that queued me to match pitch

if you wanna get to the next round.

I know who cheated. Who?

It was Greene. What?

Yeah, Greene, I saw him do it.

You're a liar! I, I saw him cheat!

What a squirmer. Just admit it.

I gave him the choice of confessing.

It isn't gonna work! Hey!

Hey, I saw you! Hey! Hey!

Whether he knew he did that or not,

or I was like, you know, copying his work

or however you wanna look at it,

without Matt, I would have a career,

but I don't know what it would be.

What I saw in Matt, in that moment,

I got a real quick lesson

in honing down a performance

and letting it work for, you know, the audience of one,

that piece of glass over there,

instead of a house of 500 or whatever.

[upbeat rock music]

[riders screaming] ♪ Don't go crazy ♪

[upbeat rock music]

[riders screaming]

Oh god, no! Stop!

I had gone in to read for a teen comedy

that was being produced by a branch of Disney

called Hollywood Pictures.

George Zaloom was producing it,

Les Mayfield directing.

And these were guys who had just come off

of doing the innovative new thing in filmmaking,

which was Behind the Scenes, the Spielberg picture,

so they were on, I think, one or two

of the Indiana Jones pictures,

and they really impressed Spielberg,

and they got their directing start that way.

And their choice to make a movie

was about a frozen caveman come to life.

[gentle adventerous music]

Speaking of theater background,

I went into this audition

knowing little about what one should do in that situation.

And the dialogue was light,

and I figured, well, Link, the thawed-out caveman,

is basically the new guy in town.

You know, he's trying to fit in and he wants to belong.

He doesn't know what a doorknob is

until someone shows him how it works.

Everything's brand new to him.

There was something about painting on glass

with ketchup and mustard squirters, I don't recall,

but whatever I got up to it left an impression.

And I went and off and did School Ties,

started getting the calls saying,

Do our movie, please do this movie.

And I was being a little bit precious, to be honest,

because I was in School Ties.

It was, you know, a thoughtful drama.

And in my thinking I thought,

Well, you know, I can't kind of throw

anything away early on.

I don't wanna confuse people about who I am.

And it was Keith Wester, who was our sound mixer,

who was just a gentleman,

he's got the headphones on, you know, he hears everything.

If you ever wanna know what's going on the set,

ask the sound guy, 'cause they hear everything.

He said, It's a bird in the hand, worth two in the nest.

What?

You can do this and you can do that,

it's a good calling card to show both.

Think of the masks, comedy, tragedy.

I went, You're right.

So I finished the film School Ties,

the offer was still there, and I took a leap.

It was a risk, and I think I learned that I like that.

You should feel a little bit of uncomfortableness.

You should feel a little bit of, I don't know,

calculated danger, you know?

That's what acting is about.

It's about taking chances.

You're gonna fall down.

The way you get up, how you get, all that,

that all played in.

And I decided, Yeah, I'm gonna get on board with this.

And that's how it began, honestly.

Everything else we did during the movie was just a lark.

I was working with Sean Astin and Pauly Shore,

and it was crazy '90s comedy.

A lot of the jokes, I don't know if they still hold up,

but, hey, it was sort of a piece of cinema history

when you go back and look at it

compared to what we make now and today.

And also it had resonance with an audience,

at that time, who were used to teen comedies,

in the 1980s,

really having a real specific formula.

And I think that film, Encino Man,

was kind of like the swan song

or the last of that genre

to really embrace the high school trope, nerd become hero.

And, of course, it flipped it upside down,

and everyone loved it.

From what I can tell, almost everyone.

[George yodeling]

[thrilling music]

[George yodeling]

[thrilling music]

Ooh.

It's the story of Odysseus.

Stay with me.

It's just a guy who wants to go home.

He's gotta go through a lot to get there.

It's like the storyline and the plot

of so many of our favorite films,

books, music, all that culture.

That was my initial heady scholastic approach.

Other than that, yeah, I went and I lifted weights

until it hurt and I barfed, [laughs]

and did it again, and checked my vanity at the door,

and my pride sometimes.

And jumped in fully knowing that,

well, if I was gonna fall down,

at least there'd be, like, a safety line on me

on this one in George of the Jungle,

considering it's a guy who smashes into trees.

And you cannot say that the guy

doesn't confront his obstacles. [laughs]

[bark blasts]

George not feel so good.

I did know that it really put some wind in my sails,

and it made me feel like,

Well, I do have some interesting new choices here.

And, again, now that I have

that sort of comedy-tragedy aspect

that the sage master of sound told me earlier,

I guess I gotta find out what I can do to counterbalance

something that's easily digestible,

mass consumed, a comedy like that,

with something that really spoke to me,

that got me in the feels,

and that was a film called Gods and Monsters.

Good morning.

My name is Whale.

This is my house.

And your name is?

Boone. Clay Boone.

I couldn't help but notice your tattoo.

That motto, Death before dishonor.

What does it mean?

It just means that I was a Marine.

Ah, the Marines.

I suppose you've served in Korea?

Sir Ian McKellen was attached,

who was just a champion of the profession.

That wasn't lost on me when I was a student in college,

'cause I probably wore out the Betamax copy

of Acting Shakespeare in the library

that he did for BBC whichever number,

because it was required viewing.

And what Ian was doing was making

iambic pentameter and heightened text in prose

so easily accessible to the audience and the listener,

it almost sounded as if he was just thinking

and speaking his own thoughts.

Let alone we know that they are written

by the genius William Shakespeare,

not far removed from what I remember hearing

in a way what Matt was doing back in the day.

So then you did have a wife?

Or a husband, depending on which of us you asked.

My friend David lived here for many years.

They have a lunch,

and they come to an understanding

across a long dining table, each seated at one side,

that they can see each other eye to eye.

And I remember him playing that scene

and maybe I willed it to be,

but I felt like, Okay.

This is someone who unabashedly is a hero

and influence in my life.

And the scene was about,

We understand each other now, do we?

For whichever reasons we learn later.

But he really made me feel

like I did have a seat at that table

that I deserved to be at.

No one could've let me know that

and feel more accepted than he did in that moment.

You don't think of me that way, do you?

And what way would that be?

Well, the way that I look at women.

Oh, don't be ridiculous.

I know a real man like you would break my neck

if I so much as laid a finger on you.

I remember on one occasion before we went to do,

I think it was the confrontation scene

with fighting and I'm not your monster,

and we were running lines and he's, Let's say the words.

So, you know, he wanted to make sure I knew my lines.

We spoke the sides together.

And he said something to me

that was certainly for my benefit,

not that he was trying to bestow knowledge on me,

or show me the way, or tell me how to.

He said, It has to be as if it's the first and last time

that you will ever do this,

and that made a lot of sense to me.

[dramatic music]

I am not

your monster!

Made a lot of sense to me.

And I hung onto that adage

and have repeated it to myself many times.

Certainly whilst doing The Whale, I knew that.

We are in serious trouble.

[thrilling music] [gunshots popping]

[The Mummy moans aggressively]

Ah!

Audiences knew the Mummy

to be an old guy wrapped in bandages

with his arms outstretched,

stumbling quietly going [moans],

and always catching whoever he's chasing

by walking while they run and smack into a wall.

And then, you know, Ah, the terror!

And those were brilliant for what they were for that time.

And so that was, you know, the perception

of how that film should be made.

Well, surprise, it was quite the opposite.

Steve Sommers' opinion was,

This is 'The Terminator' Mummy.

Ain't nothing stopping this.

What are we gonna do to write the world?

And that was the energy he brought to it.

And who knows why all the pieces line up the way they do,

but it struck a chord with audiences.

This is something that they wanted to see.

They wanted to be taken on a thrill ride.

They wanna feel a little bit dangerous.

They wanted it to be fun,

and then they wanted to do it again.

So with that combination, hey, we did it again,

in The Mummy Returns.

And then, we did it again in the third one,

but we don't have to talk about that if you don't want.

[Brendan laughs]

[spectators gasping]

There was a stunt with a rope around the neck,

and a stunt man doing it with proper safety gear

in a wide shot.

Then my turn.

And to match, put the rope around the,

you know, the reely.

There was a stunt man holding the tension on the rope,

and it wasn't selling to match what the stunt man did.

So the director asked,

Can we pull the tension up a little bit?

And we're just doing this once,

and it was kind of uncomfortable,

and it's not nice to have strangulation I learned.

Anyway, what happened basically

was I went up on the balls of my feet like a ballet dancer,

which I am not, and tried to get on my toes

'cause the tension kept going up.

I couldn't sustain it,

but the man upstairs didn't know that,

so I relaxed back into my feet in the tension.

So between the down of my body and the tension up,

I remember seeing the camera just come around,

and then it was as if a giant volume switch went [whooshes].

It irised.

And next I knew the world was sideways.

I thought, That's curious.

Ow, [spits] there's dirt in my mouth,

and my ear and my arm is twisted all weird.

Man, my shin really hurt.

And everyone's quiet,

whereas before they had the extras screaming and shouting.

And suddenly, suddenly, suddenly pin-drop quiet.

And I thought, What happened?

And Sommers ran up there, and he's going,

Brendan, Brendan, wake up, wake up.

And he's like, Hey, you just joined the club.

Same thing happened to Mel on 'Braveheart.'

And I'm like, Yay?

[Brendan laughs]

I'm wanna go home. [laughs]

Then he sent me home for the rest of the day.

But, look, that's just the physics of it.

There's no blame attached to any of this.

If anything, it's my own stupidity for not checking it out,

thinking myself to be invincible,

which I've learned, You are not. [laughs]

[suspenseful music]

Scarabs!

[suspenseful music continues]

Go, go, go!

Run!

[suspenseful music continues]

I go to fan conventions,

so they show up dressed as the characters.

People have rolled their sleeves up

and showed me, like, their calf with my mug tattooed on it.

It's a little weird, but it's popular.

I can attest.

What people love about it is the romance,

the mystery, the broad scope of it.

The number of young women who I've met over the years

who've told me, I've become an Egyptologist,

I've gone into archeology,

I have become a historian,

because this film inspired me from a young age.

None of us ever anticipated hearing

or maybe couldn't appreciate it at that time, but I do now.

I'm so grateful, 'cause, hey, it's a movie.

Win, lose, or draw, it's always gonna be there.

And your hope is it lands with people,

it stays, it changes them, it inspires 'em in some way.

This one did.

So how's school?

You're a senior, right?

You actually care?

Well, of course, I care.

I pester your mom for information

as often as she'll give it to me.

The Whale was shot during the height of COVID

before vaccines came out.

Everyone lived each day as if, like Ian said,

It could be your last.

The internal world that I approached that with was,

Well, if there, you know, conceivably is no tomorrow,

I'm doing this as if it's the last time

I will ever be invited to do this job ever again.

And it stripped away all the actory pretensions,

and insecurities, and fears,

and made the story much more personal,

considering it was four or five characters in one room

and a pretty humble piece of writing

based on Samuel D. Hunter's stage play.

Darren's approach to that was a masterclass

for me in acting,

which is to leave everything you thought you knew

about how to do this

and find out what you can get from one another

to support the performance.

The only way that character could've succeeded

in the way that it did

was not just because I was working with Hong Chau,

not just because I was working with Sadie Sink,

not just because Adrien Morot

was doing the prosthetics,

the cumbersome body suit,

which was uncanny and the technology,

it has become standardized since,

but Adrien was on the cutting edge, the tip of the spear,

using 3D to create makeup appliances that are realistic,

could last a day, et cetera, et cetera.

All of those technical things put together,

it gave to the world of that film,

just as simplicity in the mundane

and the sadness

of a man who has certain regrets in his life

and the reckoning he finds himself with.

And the story itself is not an old or unusual one

seeking to reconnect with,

if somehow, hopefully, ameliorate,

a father's relationship with their child

is really the heart of that,

and will it or will it not succeed?

That's what that story was.

When that film came to Japan, I should mention,

no one made mention ever,

any journalist, anyone I spoke to,

about the issue of Charlie's obesity.

Didn't hear about it.

That's all you hear about from any of the other journalists.

That's what they wanna talk about.

Okay, that's fair, and that's an interesting conversation,

if you wanna have it.

But the impression that it made to the Japanese public

was what it means to finally get to say all the things

that you wanted to say to your kid,

but you know it's too late,

and what you're saying, albeit correct,

is too much too late,

why didn't you do this years ago?

And is there the remote possibility

of a chance of reconciliation before time runs out?

You don't have to be angry at the whole world.

You can just be angry at me.

Okay, you know what?

You can't throw me away like I'm a piece of garbage,

and then suddenly just wanna be my dad eight years later!

You left me for your boyfriend!

It's that simple!

And if you've been telling yourself anything different,

then you're lying to yourself.

The pinnacle, the apotheosis, of that movie is,

will he get this story out to her?

Will he make his confessionals, reconciliation,

before time runs out,

and before he literally loses his life before her eyes?

And that race to get it out,

the urgency of that was palpable.

And I just gotta say this to Sadie Sink,

and we already know this,

she's starred on Broadway already, and deservedly so.

I had a front-row seat to watch Sadie blossom before my eye,

I had the best seat in the house to watch this kid,

young woman, show us how natural, and good, and talented,

and I was hanging on to her

with my fingernails, figuratively,

but just for the sheer authenticity

that she brings to the work that she does,

and that gave me so much more context

to be able to do my job as best as I could.

Acting works best when you're making your partner

or whoever you're working with look great, you know?

You wanna set that ball up, that volleyball,

so they can spike it.

She's one of those players.

I'm sorry for leaving you.

[inhales laboriously] I was in love, and...

I left you behind.

You did not deserve that.

I don't.

I don't know how [inhales laboriously]

I could have done such a thing.

I felt astonishment.

I was in company of nominees who were incredible actors.

Could have gone any way as far as I could tell.

And, you know, ask me on whatever day,

maybe I would've picked someone among that group,

apart from myself, and it would be the correct choice.

I appreciate how lucky I was to be standing there.

That's what primarily was my good fortune.

But I also needed to acknowledge

that, you know, if you're gonna be an actor,

it's not an easy job.

It's a trajectory that is a corkscrew, sometimes worse.

And it's not enough to just stay the course

and tough it out,

because you still have to be accepted.

And just as with the kid from School Ties,

he had his nose pressed up against the glass

wanting to be a part of the good thing beyond it,

but was disallowed.

And I had to acknowledge that I have felt that way,

and I was able to break the glass.

And for what it's worth, I wake up with bruises,

I think I pinch myself in my sleep to tell you the truth.

I demand to confer privately with Mr. Burkhart!

This is unheard of.

Ernest Burkhart is my client!

The rules prohibit this.

I demand the opportunity to speak with Mr. Burkhart!

This man cannot represent

both the defendant and the witness!

It is a conflict.

He has been missing for two months!

That's Martin Scorsese.

He loves actors.

He moves furniture around during rehearsal,

loves to rehearse.

We got on Zoom calls,

and he let me know he wants this lawyer

who is an amalgamation of many different lawyers,

and he said, He has to be forceful,

and overbearing, and large.

I want him powerful.

And, of course, you're gonna, Yes, sir.

I still had a bit of the giddy,

I can't believe I'm working

in a Martin Scorsese movie, going on.

But, then again, so did everybody, so did John Lithgow.

We would sit in the bus, in the heat of Oklahoma,

driving between camps or wherever we were,

and John would be like, Acting is hard. [laughs]

He's not wrong.

They beat you and they tortured you.

Oh, no, no, they didn't.

But they, they did keep me up for days.

No, they beat you!

They beat you!

Yes, they beat me, they beat me, sir.

Thank you!

You know, in off-camera lines for Leo,

he would tell me, Just let him have it, and so I did.

And you'll never know it or see it, and you shouldn't,

but I did let loose

with a flurry of vitriol towards Leo.

And, Cut, and he said, That's not true!

I'm sorry, I'm sorry!

Did not mean it. He told me to.

And Leo was like, I know, I know, it's Marty.

But that's what he wanted.

Martin was unafraid to, you know, put a joystick

in the actors and make them do his bidding like that,

and you absolutely feel privileged to be playing that game.

If I have to guess, you, um,

you sell people. [chuckles]

[Shinji] No.

No.

We sell emotion.

Oh.

How?

[Shinji] We play roles in the client's lives.

After doing The Whale, it's not,

Well, I've done it, I've arrived.

It's, Okay, well, what's next?

And I wanted to make a polar-opposite turn,

another sort of dogleg off into career choices

that are maybe least of what you would expect

or anticipate that an actor would do

from whatever he did from the time before.

And I think, you know, diversity's important of course,

but, hey, it'd be great

if you had that material to choose from.

I was lucky enough that I did,

and I did see this script for this curious film,

which was about surrogacy in Japan

using family members to stand in for one another,

which on the surface could seem quite corny,

or fanciful, or pejorative even.

But I learned, from meeting Hikari,

that it serves a purpose.

It's okay to pretend,

sometimes it can really fulfill and nurture a need

that humans have when they're bereft of company

or they feel like they're not complete

for reasons being that they can't enjoin

all the challenges that they had

and to be able to make this film,

which does play into satisfying the need

that these clients have for people

to stand in in their lives.

Whereas, it would have had been impossible in reality.

And right in the middle is a place called Minnesota.

Is that where my grandparents lived?

Uh, no.

My mom did.

My dad wasn't around that much.

The pretend, the make believe of it all

is what's most important.

And I also love that,

hey, it's about this profession of acting,

which, on the surface, it has kind of a hackneyed

sort of adjustment to it

when telling someone, Oh, I'm an actor,

especially when starting one's career off.

Oh, really? What have you done?

Oh, no, I don't know it, I never saw it.

Oh, really? Oh, isn't that cute?

Oh, that's cute, yeah.

The feeling that,

yes, acting is important,

it does fulfill the need,

and it does have service

to those who really just [inhales deeply]

[exhales deeply] wanna feel good about what they're missing,

even if for only a little while, even if it's make belief.

Until, in the case with Hikari's film, the lines blur,

and the roles of a lifetime

go from what the expectation was

to something completely opposite.

[gentle music]

Being an actor, you have to have courage,

because without courage, you can't be brave.

You can't be brave unless you have an obstacle,

something you fear, something in your way.

And the only way you're gonna get through it, around it,

over it is with courage.

And it doesn't mean that you're lionhearted,

it just means that you have to have the strength

to at least try.

[gentle music ends]