Brendan Fraser was once hailed as a heartthrob in the late 90s into the turn of the millennium.
After becoming a household name thanks to his action-packed roles in George of the Jungle and The Mummy series until 2008, now the role that could win him his first Oscar has a body that is far from the stereotypical six-pack of an action hero.
Fraser will play Charlie, a man who weighs a life-threatening 600lbs and is desperate to reconnect with his abandoned daughter in the 2022 drama titled The Whale.
The American-Canadian actor told Entertainment Weekly that it was a role he could relate to from his own past trauma after many years lost in the Hollywood wilderness.
“In his profound sadness, which he wears on his body as a manifestation of the trauma that he has endured... It's important to remember that he's a human being,” he said. “I've had my own fluctuations in body weight, but it was helpful to put the two together to create Charlie from an authentic standpoint and get it as near to him as it was safe for me to do.”
Fraser had a five-year hiatus from big-screen movies in 2014 while he processed a lengthy divorce from ex-wife Afton Smith over child support payments.
He was ordered to pay $900,000 annually from 2009 but in 2013, he claimed he could no longer afford that amount and tried to renegotiate the terms.
Fraser was also undergoing multiple surgeries on his knees and back citing his medical bills as a contributing factor to his decline in wealth.
“By the time I did the third Mummy picture in China,” which was 2008, I was put together with tape and ice,” he told GQ in an explosive 2018 interview.
In the same interview, Fraser alleged that a former President of the Hollywood Foreign Press Association (HFPA), Phillip Berk, had sexually assaulted him in 2003.
“His left hand reaches around, grabs my a** cheek, and one of his fingers touches me in the taint. And he starts moving it around,” Fraser unloaded. “I felt ill. I felt like a little kid. I thought I was going to cry...in my mind, at least, something had been taken away from me.”
Berk has denied any wrongdoing and no charges were ever filed, per PEOPLE. He also told GQ that Fraser's career "declined through no fault" of the HFPA.
Nevertheless, Fraser questioned if he had been blackballed by Hollywood and why acting roles had dried up: "The phone does stop ringing in your career, and you start asking yourself why. There’s many reasons, but was this one of them? I think it was."
Two years earlier, Fraser also lost his mother and had a difficult time in his grief. He fell into a deep depression as a result because he lost a version of who he once was as an actor.
“I was blaming myself and I was miserable,” he told GQ. “I was saying, ‘This is nothing; this guy reached around and he copped a feel.’ That summer wore on — and I can't remember what I went on to work on next.”
His TV roles in The Affair and Doom Patrol brought him back to the big screen in 2019, where he played Miles Mitchell in The Poison Rose.
And he made a profound reference from the film to Entertainment Tonight Canada when he was asked how he recovered his career.
“I’m no chemist,” he said. “But I do know poison can be useful towards making medicine.”
Now, thanks to his performance in The Whale, many critics are calling for Fraser to scoop the Oscar for Best Actor at the 2023 Academy Awards.
"Fraser richly deserves to be nominated for a best actor Oscar," critic Nicholas Barber agreed in his review for Culture. Barber went on to note that the star's performance was doubly likely to be successful at awards shows because of the physical transformation Fraser underwent for it.
And writing for the BBC, Nicholas Barber titles his piece: "The Whale review: 'Brendan Fraser deserves an Oscar'".
In her review, Barber adamantly writes: "Fraser richly deserves to be nominated for a best actor Oscar, and if that doesn't happen, I won't just eat my hat, I'll eat as many pizzas and cheese-and-meatball sandwiches as Charlie gets through in the film."
And, as of this writing, Sky Bet has Fraser as the odds-on favorite to win the honor.
Let's just hope it happens!