The movie was a global behemoth, making $416 million from an $80 million budget - the kind of return that those in the motion picture business call “a success”.įraser didn’t know when he accepted the role of Rick that he would make a bunch of money but also tap into a franchise that would occupy (on and off) the next nine years of his life. Fraser’s chemistry with Weisz sizzled, a believable opposites-attract romance given the way the two of them couldn’t keep their eyes off each other. His Rick has the arsenal to blast his way through some bad guys and the historical know-how to impress Evelyn, and he can do both of those things in the same scene. The film would live or die on its leading man, and luckily for The Mummy, they hired Fraser. The 1999 film is an adventure high on derring-do requiring a star who could take up space with his sincerity, give life to a script largely composed of wise cracks, and look great in cream linen while he was doing it. The Mummy played to all of Fraser’s literal and figurative strengths. And that big back rippling under the shirt.” He wears tight, jodhpurs-y trousers with big boots and his costumes are all really sexy. “He’s six-foot-three and his thighs … They’re enormous. “He’s so massive - he doesn’t look that big on screen.
The film was a box office hit, grossing $174.4 million worldwide.Īs Weisz, his eventual love interest in The Mummy, put it: “He’s got a pornographic body. If you thought Alexander Skarsgard was ripped in The Legend of Tarzan, try watching Fraser’s abdominals contract as he swings from vine to vine in George of the Jungle. No wonder, then, that Fraser made a name for himself as beautiful men out of time in films like Encino Man - in which he played a caveman who is unfrozen in modern day California - or 1997 hit George of the Jungle, which touched on similar themes, just more muscly. It’s like a computer algorithm designed a man that would appeal to as many people as possible. You want me to do it again?’”įraser is handsome in the way that an athlete is handsome: earnest, approachable and universal. “But I was like: ‘That’s OK! I’ll take it. “I think I bruised a rib,” Fraser recalled.
It was 1991 when Fraser first acted in a film, a movie called Dogfight starring River Phoenix, after which Fraser received his Screen Actors Guild membership and “an extra 50 bucks”, as he told GQ, because he happily conceded to being thrown into a pinball machine during a fight. He graduated from high school in 1990 and went to New York to pursue acting, but after a brief detour to Los Angeles, he dropped out and stayed on in Hollywood to build a career in film. Broad conclusion, sure, but in Fraser’s case it was true. It’s tempting to draw broad conclusions from such a childhood: kids who move around a lot don’t always have a lot of friends and spend more time with themselves, thus honing a flair for the dramatic. As a result, Fraser speaks fluent French. The family-of-six - Fraser has three older brothers - lived in California, Seattle, Ottawa, the Netherlands and Switzerland before he even finished high school. Picture: Supplied.įraser was born in the US to two Canadians and spent his childhood moving almost every other year. In the early to mid-2000s, actor Brendan Fraser was riding high off the success of box office hits like The Mummy. There’s a tragic reason behind the actor’s disappearance from Hollywood. But these days, the actor is rarely seen on the big screen and his most famous role of recent times is a supporting character on a later season of The Affair. The Mummy, along with its sequels, established Fraser as a (capital M) Movie Star. Those big, wide, piercing green eyes, that head of implausibly floppy hair falling across his forehead, just so. Has cinema ever had a glow up quite like this one? Fraser’s Rick transformed before our very eyes from a dirty, grotty man locked in a Cairo prison cell to a suave explorer in a pristine white linen suit, a man possessing both the brains and the brawn to find a long lost Egyptian burial ground before an ancient, mummified priest enacts his revenge upon the world. RELATED: Brendan Fraser's emotional new interview
Starring alongside Rachel Weisz in The Mummy cemented Brendan Fraser’s status as a Hollywood heavyweight.