Brendan Fraser won the Oscar for Best Actor for his role in The Whale this Sunday, March 12, 2023. This is a confirmed comeback for the actor, who has been on the sidelines since a sexual assault and health problems.
[Updated Mar 13, 2023 12:24 PM] 2023 is definitely Brendan Fraser’s year. The actor returns to cinema after years of traversing the wilderness in The Whale, currently in cinema releases. For this role of a teacher suffering from morbid obesity, the 54-year-old actor won the Oscar for Best Actor this Sunday, March 12, 2023.
This award is a consecration for Brendan Fraser, who has gone through difficult years on a personal level. The latter confided in 2018 that he had been the victim of a sexual assault, accusing the former president of the Hollywood Association of the Foreign Press Philip Berk of having “touched him in the perineum” in 2003. Subsequently, the actor believes he was blacklisted from Hollywood. He also admitted to having suffered from depression and several health problems, linked in particular to the many stunts he was able to practice during filming. The Oscar he won this Sunday is a real revenge on life for the actor, soon to be cast in Killers of the Flower Moon, Martin Scorsese’s latest film.
Brendan Fraser Short Biography – Brendan Fraser began his career in theater before heading to film in the 90s. He landed his first major role in Sam Weisman’s ‘George of the Jungle’ in 1997. He became very popular with the general public by playing the main character of “The Mummy” and the following parts. In 2002, we find him in a more serious role in “A Quiet American”. In 2006, he was nominated for the Gotham Independent Film Award for Best Cast for the film “Collision” by Paul Haggis.
Since the end of the 2000s, Brendan Fraser has become rarer in cinema and on television. He will admit to having been sexually assaulted in 2003 by a former president of the Hollywood Foreign Press Association, and to having suffered from health problems and depression. After a remarkable appearance in the series The Affair in 2018, he made his big comeback to the cinema with The Whale, in which he plays a professor suffering from morbid obesity who lives reclusively at home. For this role, he won the Oscar for Best Actor in 2023.
Brendan Fraser said he had several hospital stays in recent years. The reason ? The actor himself tried his own stunts in his films, as is the case on The Mummy where he almost died strangling or on Journey to the Center of the Earth. He explained that he had undergone several operations, in particular at the level of the back or the knees. He explains that he “forced too much, to the point that it became destructive”. He also said he suffered from depression, particularly in connection with the sexual assault he says he suffered.