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Brendan James Fraser ( ; born December 3, 1968) is an American-Canadian actor. His accolades include an Academy Award, a Screen Actors Guild Award, and a nomination for a Golden Globe Award.
Fraser had his breakthrough in 1992 with the comedy Encino Man and the drama School Ties. He gained further prominence for his starring roles in the comedies With Honors (1994) and George of the Jungle (1997) and emerged as a star playing Rick O'Connell in The Mummy trilogy (1999–2008). He took on dramatic roles in Gods and Monsters (1998), The Quiet American (2002), and Crash (2004), and further fantasy roles in Bedazzled (2000) and Journey to the Center of the Earth (2008).
Fraser's film work slowed from the late 2000s to mid-2010s due to poor box office performances, and various health and personal issues, including the fallout from a sexual assault committed against him in 2003 by Philip Berk, the then-president of the Hollywood Foreign Press Association. In addition to films, Fraser branched into television with roles in the Showtime drama The Affair (2016–2017), the FX series Trust (2018), and the Max series Doom Patrol (2019–2023).
His film career was revitalized by roles in Steven Soderbergh's No Sudden Move (2021), Darren Aronofsky's The Whale (2022) and Martin Scorsese's Killers of the Flower Moon (2023). Fraser's portrayal of a obesity English-teacher in The Whale won him the Academy Award for Best Actor, the first such achievement for a Canadian.
Fraser's family moved often during his childhood, living in Eureka, California; Seattle; Ottawa; the Netherlands; and Switzerland. His earlier years were spent attending a Montessori school in Detroit and the Sacred Heart School in Bellevue, Washington. He then attended Upper Canada College, a private boarding school in Toronto, from which he graduated in 1987.
While on vacation in London, in the 1970s, he attended his first professional theater-show, Oliver!, in the West End, which sparked his interest in acting. He also joined the chorus of a high-school musical production of Oklahoma!
Fraser graduated from Seattle's Cornish College of the Arts in 1990. He then began acting at a small acting college in New York City. Fraser had planned on studying toward a Master of Fine Arts in Acting from Southern Methodist University, but after visiting Hollywood, he decided instead to move there to pursue work in film. "Brendan Fraser's eclectic career" . South Coast Today.
Between 1994 and 1997, he starred in several box office failures such as With Honors (1994) with Joe Pesci, Airheads (1994) with Steve Buscemi & Adam Sandler, The Passion of Darkly Noon (1995), Mrs. Winterbourne (1996) and The Twilight of the Golds (1997). He also had a small part in the 1995 film Now and Then. He made cameo appearances in the Pauly Shore films Son in Law (1993) and In the Army Now (1994), reprising his Encino Man role.
Fraser performed at his first theatre production in 1995 at the Geffen Playhouse, taking on the role of Victor in John Patrick Shanley's Four Dogs and a Bone.
He had his first major box office success with the 1997 comedy film George of the Jungle which was based on the animated series of the same title created by Jay Ward.
He achieved his biggest commercial success when he portrayed the lead adventurer Rick O'Connell in the fantasy adventure film The Mummy (1999) and its sequel The Mummy Returns (2001). The Mummy established him as one of the biggest film stars of the 1990s. In between these successes, he also starred in the box office bombs Dudley Do-Right (1999) (which was based on another Jay Ward animated series) and the stop-motion/live-action fantasy comedy Monkeybone (2001); though he did have moderate success with the romantic comedy Blast from the Past (1999) and the fantasy comedy Bedazzled (2000), a remake of the 1967 British film of the same name. He lent his voice for the unreleased animated film Big Bug Man, with Marlon Brando.
He has also made guest appearances on the television shows Scrubs, King of the Hill, and The Simpsons. In March 2006, he was inducted into Canada's Walk of Fame, the first American-born actor to receive the honor. However, as of 2022, he does not have a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. After a six-year hiatus in the franchise, Fraser returned for the second sequel to The Mummy released in August 2008 and titled . Filming started in Montreal on July 27, 2007, and the film also starred Jet Li as Emperor Han. That same year, he starred in the 3D film adaptation of Jules Verne's Journey to the Center of the Earth and the fantasy film Inkheart (chosen personally for the lead role by the Inkheart's author Cornelia Funke).
In 2016, Fraser replaced Ray Liotta in the Bollywood thriller Line of Descent. Fraser later joined the recurring cast of the television drama series The Affair during season 3 where he portrayed the misery-minded prison guard Gunther. He portrayed Getty family fixer James Fletcher Chace in the FX anthology series Trust, which premiered on March 25, 2018. Fraser portrayed Clifford "Cliff" Steele / Robotman in the Titans TV series, with Jake Michaels physically portraying Robotman. He reprised the role in the spin-off series Doom Patrol, where he voices the character and appears as Steele in flashbacks; Riley Shanahan, replacing Jake Michaels in Titans, physically portrays Robotman.
His comeback after a period of relative inactivity was dubbed "The Brennaissance" by fans. In an interview on The Graham Norton Show, Fraser acknowledged the portmanteau.
The film premiered at the Venice International Film Festival in September 2022. Fraser spoke on preparing for the role with The New York Times stating, "The Obesity Action Coalition gave me access to many people, so I could ask them their story on Zoom calls. I talked to maybe eight or 10 people — some bedridden, some perfectly mobile." Fraser's performance was highly praised and the film received a six-minute standing ovation at the festival and subsequently won him an Oscar for Best Actor. He became the first Canadian to win the best actor award.
In August of the same year, Fraser was announced as part of the cast of Martin Scorsese's film Killers of the Flower Moon, as well as Max Barbakow's comedy film Brothers. In October 2021, Fraser was cast to portray the villain Firefly in the superhero film Batgirl, set in the DC Extended Universe; the release of the film was canceled in August 2022 after a change in Warner Bros. studio priorities.
Fraser lent his voice to the audiodrama The Downloaded, written by Robert J. Sawyer, which was released in Autumn of 2023 as an Audible-exclusive audiobook. In December 2023, Fraser was a guest narrator at Disney's Candlelight Processional at Walt Disney World. In July 2024, it was announced that Fraser would star as Dwight D. Eisenhower in Pressure.
In April 2007, Fraser and his wife sold their home in Beverly Hills, California for $3 million; in December of that year, Fraser's publicist announced that the couple had decided to divorce. Fraser was ordered to make monthly alimony payments of $50,000 for ten years or until Smith remarried, whichever came first, and monthly child support payments of $25,000. In early 2011, Fraser asked the court to reduce his alimony payments, asserting that he was unable to meet the annual obligation of $600,000; he did not contest the child support payments. In late 2011, Smith accused Fraser of fraudulently failing to disclose some of his financial assets, including contracts for two films: Extraordinary Measures and Furry Vengeance. In 2014, the court ruled against both Fraser's request for alimony reduction and Smith's fraud allegation. Both parents received public praise for being actively engaged in their sons’ lives. Smith has since turned from acting to book-writing and real estate.
Since September 2022, Fraser has been in a relationship with makeup artist Jeanne Moore. The couple made their red-carpet debut at the 2022 Venice Film Festival, and Fraser expressed his gratitude to Moore during his acceptance speech for the Oscar for Best Actor at the 95th Academy Awards.
, Fraser lives in Bedford, New York.
Fraser speaks French language and serves on the board of directors for FilmAid International. He is an accomplished amateur photographer and has used several in movies and on TV shows, most notably in his guest roles on Scrubs. In his first appearance, he used a Polaroid pack film, and in his second appearance, he used a Holga with a Polaroid back, a Japanese-only model. The book Collector's Guide to Instant Cameras includes a dedication to Fraser. He is also an accomplished amateur archer.
Several publications and social media users assumed that Fraser had been Blacklisting from Hollywood because of his accusation against Berk. In the 2018 GQ article in which Fraser first made his allegation public, he said, "The phone does stop ringing in your career, and you start asking yourself why. There's many reasons, but was my one of them? I think it was." However, in Fraser’s 2019 appearance on the radio show Sway in the Morning, he expressed a different view, saying, "I don't think the HFPA really wield that much power." In 2022, Fraser told GQ that if the HFPA nominated him for a Golden Globe that year for his most recent film, The Whale, he would "not participate" because of his "history" with the organization.
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