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Biography
He was born Brendan James Fraser on the
3rd of December, 1968, in Indianapolis, to Canadian parents. The Frasers
were an old Canadian family, with strong traditions in education and
sport. Indeed, his uncle George had won a gold medal at the 1952
Helsinki Olympics.
His father, Peter, had been a journalist
and now worked for the Canadian Government's office of tourism. Mother
Carol was a sales counsellor, and also looked after Brendan and his
three older brothers - Kevin, Sean and Regan. Peter's job took the
family all over the world, meaning that, by the age of 13, Brendan had
lived in Ottawa, Detroit, Cincinnati, London, Rome, Switzerland,
Wassenaar in Holland, and Seattle. While in Holland, aged 7, he hung out
with the "army brat" kids of military personnel, and took to
calling himself a "Brochure Brat".
By 12, he was in London, and this is
where he first made contact with acting. Seeing a matinee of Oliver! in
the West End, he was immediately taken with the thrill of it all. When
his parents then chose to settle in Seattle, young Brendan quickly
joined the chorus of a school production of Oklahoma! In the 8th Grade
at the Sacred Heart school in Redmond, a suburb of Seattle, he would
play Captain Corcoran in HMS Pinafore.
He remembers this as a real turning
point. Making a grand entrance, he tossed his cape high in the air, only
for it to land on his head. The audience, naturally, burst into
laughter. What was he to do? Would he give in to embarrassment and walk
off, or would he brave it out and continue? Recognising that, despite
the laughter, he was having a great time, he went on. And has kept going
on ever since.
At 13, Brendan had been sent to the Upper Canada College in Toronto, a
prestigious boarding school. Here, though his academic averages were not
good, he would work in the school's little theatre, appearing in plays
and revues, and acting as stage manager and ticket seller. Before his
final year, though, Peter opted to leave his government office, thus
losing Brendan's tuition subsidy and bringing the boy back to
Seattle.
Here Brendan, having decided that acting
was to be his thing, would enrol at the Cornish College of the Arts, his
degree emphasising physical performance. One major influence on the boy
would be actor, clown and pantomimist Bill Irwin, who'd appeared in
Eight Men Out and Robert Altman's Popeye. Sneaking into Irwin's show,
The Regard Of Flight, Brendan was hugely impressed by an act that was
funny, complex and impossible to categorise. Fraser decided there and
then that he, too, would be more than just an actor.
Cornish was a high-class and fairly elitist establishment that taught
theatre acting and frowned upon cinema, an attitude that Brendan picked
up but did not hold onto for long. Onstage, he starred in The Marriage
Of Bette And Boo. By 1991, his list of credits would be impressive.
Having graduated in 1990, as a Bachelor of Fine Arts, he took a
year-long internship at the Intiman Theatre, and was also a member of
the Laughing Horse Summer Theatre. Thus, by his early twenties, he'd
already appeared in such classics as Romeo And Juliet, A Midsummer
Night's Dream, Three Sisters, Arms And The Man, The King Stag and The
Madwoman Of Chaillot. Hard to believe that George Of the Jungle has such
a classical background.
Eventually, though, the movies came to him. Casting director Sharon
Bialy was in town, scouting for a film to be called Bound By Honour.
Brendan auditioned, but wasn't right for the Latino kid role she hoped
to fill (in fact, the film was never made). However, she did notice that
this "very shy, very gawky" boy seemed to come alive during
the reading and she suggested he visit her if he ever came to Los
Angeles. Perhaps she could introduce him to some agents, find him some
auditions.
Brendan decided to give it a go. Turning down a second year's internship
at the Intiman, and also a Master of Fine Arts degree at the Southern
Methodist University in Dallas, in January 1991 he borrowed his mother's
car and took off for the City of Angels.
Finding work straight away, he made his
debut in Dogfight. Set in 1963, this concerned a group of young Marines
spending their last night in San Francisco before departing for Vietnam.
Boys being boys, they arrange a "dogfight", a competition to
see who can bring the ugliest girl to a party. The star, River Phoenix,
picks on waitress Lili Taylor but, of course, discovers that she's
actually quite beautiful. Brendan had a brief, one-line part as a
sailor. But what a line it was - "How would you like to eat my
shit?"
This would be another turning point for Fraser. Still convinced that
film acting was a lowly pursuit, he'd expected Phoenix to be
empty-headed and arrogant. Instead, he'd found him to be sweet and
helpful, qualities that finally broke down Brendan's Cornish-bred
attitude.
Quickly, TV work came his way. He had another small role in Child Of
Darkness, Child Of Light, where a Catholic priest, investigating two
immaculate conceptions, discovers that one of the children is God's kid,
and the other the Devil's. But which is which, and can he find out
before Satan's little helpers come a-knocking? After this came a far
beefier role, as the troubled adopted son of Martin Sheen and Caroline
Kava in Guilty Until Proven Innocent. Convicted of a murder he didn't
commit, he must first convince Sheen of his innocence, then pray to be
rescued. Next came My Old School, a pilot that proved barren.
1992 would be something of a breakthrough year. First came Encino Man,
where Sean Astin and MTV-comic Pauly Shore discover a caveman, reanimate
him, call him Link and introduce him to contemporary Californian
culture, in the hope that their unusual new friend will bring popularity
their way. It was pretty tepid stuff, but Brendan used his training in
physical acting to proper effect as the charmingly innocent neanderthal,
making the film an unexpected hit. In the next couple of years, he'd
make cameos in two more Shore vehicles - Son In Law and In The Army Now
- both times as characters named Link.
The same year brought another success, School Ties, actually filmed
before Encino Man. Such was Brendan's charisma at the audition that the
casting director claimed the hairs stood up on the back of their neck
for the first time since an early view of Bruce
Willis, a decade previously. The movie took Brendan back to the
Fifties, as a kid brought into an elite prep school on a football
scholarship so he can help the school beat their deadliest rivals.
Trouble is, Brendan's Jewish - not a popular persuasion at the time -
and, though he hides the fact, it comes out when he fights with
mean-spirited rival Matt
Damon over both a girl and the prime quarter-back position.
School Ties, also featuring Ben
Affleck and Chris O'Donnell, was not a hit at the time, though it
received good reviews for its sensitive perspective. Later, it would
find cult status amongst teenagers raised on such shows as Dawson's
Creek.
The parts kept coming. Next came Twenty
Bucks, an art-house piece that followed a $20 bill from its ATM birth to
its eventual demise, changing and sometimes wrecking lives as it passes
from hand to hand. Joining such mavericks as Christopher Lloyd, Steve
Buscemi, William H. Macy and Elizabeth Shue, Brendan played a bridegroom
who receives the note from his father-in-law as a wedding gift - a gift
intended as a warning that money doesn't come easily.
After this came Younger And Younger, where serial adulterer Donald
Sutherland has to run the family storage business when his poor wife
snuffs it. Even when son Brendan returns to help out, Donald continues
to break down, his wife reappearing to him in his dreams, each time
looking younger and more lovely. Even stranger was Brendan's next
project, an episode of Fallen Angels directed by Steven Soderbergh.
This saw Peter Coyote as a bar owner and
Brendan as a hitman, both of them falling for the same bar-man. This
would be followed by With Honours, where Brendan played a Harvard
student who loses his thesis. Unfortunately, it's discovered by dosser
Joe Pesci, who'll only return it page by page, in exchange for daily
food and accommodation (Brendan, naturally, learns to respect him
anyway).
What happened next could have been very different. Brendan was up for
the part of cheating blue-blood Charles Van Doren in Quiz Show, but
turned down the opportunity. For a start, he felt he'd done too many New
England preppie roles and needed to spread his wings. He was also deeply
intimidated by the movie's director, Robert Redford, having earlier
tried out for Redford's A River Runs Through It but been pipped by Brad
Pitt.
Instead, he went for another comedy, a zany piece called Airheads. Here
he played Chazz, leader of hairy rock group The Lone Rangers, who, along
with band-mates Rex (Buscemi) and Pip (Adam Sandler), hold up the local
radio station with fake guns and force them to play their new single,
Degenerated. No good can come of it.
Following this was The Scout, where Albert Brooks played a major league
talent spotter, fallen on hard times and scouring Mexico for new blood.
Amazingly, he discovers Steve Nebraska (Brendan), one of the best
pitchers and batsmen he's ever seen. Returning in triumph to the New
York Yankees, he quickly discovers that not only is Brendan massively
immature, he may also be unstable, so he hires therapist Dianne Wiest to
dig deeper.
It was an odd film, part comedy, part psycho-drama and, though it
widened Fraser's repertoire, it did little for his career. Neither did
his next role, a bit part as a Vietnam vet in the sappy chick-flick Now
And Then. The Scout, though, did give Brendan the chance to throw the
opening pitch at a Seattle Mariners game. Sadly, it was a disaster.
"It was miserable," he later recalled, "I pitched the
worst slider you've ever seen".
His next effort, though, DID make a
difference. Going indie with Philip Ridley's The Passion Of Darkly Noon,
he played the title role of a poor innocent whose ultra-religious
parents die, leaving him lost and alone. Deep in the woods, he stumbles
upon the cottage of Ashley Judd and Viggo Mortensen, who take him in,
only to find that, pulled apart by the conflict between his religious
beliefs and his desire for Judd, he goes utterly mental.
It was an excellent movie, and a severe test of Fraser's dramatic
abilities. And the following year (1996) saw him challenging himself
once again in a dual role in Mrs Winterbourne. Here he played the two
sons of old matriarch Shirley Maclaine. The first son, Hugh, dies in a
train crash along with his pregnant wife, a crash that Ricki Lake, as a
down-and-out who's also pregnant, survives. As this is the movies, the
Winterbournes believe Lake to be Hugh's wife (whom they'd never met),
and take her into their aristocratic home, where second son Bill soon
conquers his aversion to the loathsome working-class and falls for her.
After this came Glory Daze, written and directed by Rich Wilkes (author
of Airheads), which concerned a communal house of Santa Cruz college
kids a few days before graduation and the inevitable break-up of their
laddish gang. A kind of punk rock Animal House, this featured Ben
Affleck as well as stand-out cameos from Matt
Damon, Matthew McConaughey and Brendan.
As if perturbed by these macho shenanigans, Brendan moved straight on to
his second gay role, in the TV movie The Twilight Of The Golds. This saw
Jennifer Beals as a young mother-to-be who, having her unborn child
genetically tested, discovers that he may well turn out to be gay. This
causes much tension in the family when it turns out that her mother and
father (Faye Dunaway and Garry Marshall) would probably have aborted
Jennifer's brother, opera director Brendan, if they'd known his sexual
proclivities before his birth. Taking a pop at both irresponsible
scientists and closed-minded religion, the movie was unusually
intriguing TV fare.
Now, at last, came a major breakthrough. Having lost out to Dermot
Mulroney for a key role in Julia
Roberts' mega-hit My Best Friend's Wedding, Brendan did score the
lead in the wacky kids' flick George Of The Jungle, based on the Sixties
cartoon series. Here he played an unconscionably clumsy Tarzan figure,
repeatedly crashing into trees, who's discovered by a socialite on
safari and taken back to San Francisco, only to return to save his ape
brother from poachers. Adults would probably find the whole thing overly
slapstick but, once more bringing his physical talents into play,
Brendan became a huge star for children everywhere, scoring a huge hit
in the process.
His next part could not have been more
different. Where he'd suffered losing out to Dermot Mulroney the year
before, now he enjoyed a slice of good fortune when Robert Downey Jr
pulled out of Gods And Monsters. This saw Ian McKellen as James Whale,
legendary director of Frankenstein, viewing his life in flashback as he
spent his last days trying to get hunky gardener Brendan to pose naked
for him (Brendan would refuse to disrobe, believing that a nude George
Of The Jungle would detract from one of the film's climactic scenes).
The two actors worked well together, Brendan impressing as a he-man
gradually opening out into a fuller creative life. Both McKellen and
Lynn Redgrave, as his disapproving housekeeper, would be
Oscar-nominated.
For Fraser, working with McKellen was a dream come true. Back at
Cornish, he'd studied the great man's Acting Shakespeare tapes and came
near to idolising him. When, a few years before Gods and Monsters,
McKellen was casting for his black shirt version of Richard III, Brendan
had gone to audition AND written a personal card to McKellen, begging
for a role.
The casting directors weren't kind, but
Brendan did receive a handwritten reply from McKellen, saying that the
project could do with Brendan's enthusiasm but, sorry, there just wasn't
a place for him. Brendan would show McKellen the card when they met up
to prepare for Gods And Monsters and, on many mornings, would drive to
McKellen's rented home in the Hollywood Hills and make his breakfast -
all the while taking the chance to discuss their shared craft.
For his own part, McKellen would say of Fraser: "I didn't
appreciate Brendan's performance while it was happening. I've talked to
somebody who worked with Marilyn Monroe, and (he) said the same of her.
You could only see it through the camera or on the screen".
1998 also saw Brendan in Still Breathing, where he played a San Antonio
puppeteer who dreams of LA con artist Joanna Going and sets out to find
her. Will fate bring them together? You betcha. It was a sweet romance,
with a supernatural edge - and it earned Brendan his first major award,
as Best Actor at the Seattle International Film Festival (hometown boy
makes good).
Life only got better, too, as the same year saw him marry his long-time
girlfriend Afton Smith (named after a Scottish river in a Robert Burns
poem), a former actress, one year his senior, who'd appeared in the
likes of Less Than Zero, Fried Green Tomatoes and Reality Bites. The
pair had met at Winona Ryder's 4th of July barbecue in 1993 where Fraser
had been taken by Airheads director Michael Lehmann. Actually, Fraser
had first met Smith's dog, a collie mix called Wile E. When Smith came
looking for her pooch, she found him with Brendan and said "Wile E,
what did you find?" What, indeed.
Their engagement was no less amusing. On
holiday in Paris, Brendan found himself too shy to pop the question, and
forged a cunning plan. He'd pin a note saying "Will you marry
me?" inside his jacket then, as he and Afton posed for timed
Polaroid shots, he would open the jacket as the camera fired so she
would see it when the photo came out.
Unfortunately, it wasn't that simple. The
camera misfired, it fell over, the light was wrong, the note was too
small, it went on for ages. Eventually, she spotted the note in one shot
and, thinking it was a stray price tag, opened his jacket. At that
moment, he bent to pick up something he'd dropped. Well, while he was on
one knee, what else could he say? The couple would bear their first
child, Griffin Arthur, in 2002.
There would be one more minor hit before Brendan achieved a stardom that
stretched beyond the nursery. In Blast From The Past, he played the son
of paranoid inventor Christopher Walken and obedient mother Sissy Spacek.
Back in the Sixties, with the Cold War at its chilliest, Walken suspects
a nuclear attack and hides with his family in a home-made fall-out
shelter. Running out of supplies 35 years later, they send Fraser out
into a world they're convinced will be filled with dangerous mutants. He
must bring back provisions and, if possible, a non-mutant wife, in order
to re-populate the Earth.
This was classic Fraser. Chunky, but charmingly bashful and beatifically
innocent, he trudged, wide-eyed, through the streets of modern-day Los
Angeles, clearly blown away by the novelty and craziness of it all. And
then he meets street-smart Alicia Silverstone. As in so many of his
movies, he was a fish miles from water.
And now came the big one. In Stephen Sommers' The Mummy he played Rick
O'Connell, a slightly dodgy adventurer who helps Egyptologist Rachel
Weisz discover Hamunaptra, the city of the dead. Seeking both
knowledge and treasure, they inadvertently awaken the cursed mummy
Imhotep, who wants to use Weisz's body to resurrect his long-dead lover,
and then, naturally, to take over the world. It was a fantastic movie,
the first to capture the spirit of epic adventure since Indiana Jones
And The Temple Of Doom, and quite rightly shattered the $100 million
mark.
Immediately, Brendan consolidated with Dudley Do-Right. Directed by
Blast From The Past's Hugh Wilson, this was, like George Of The Jungle,
based on a Sixties cartoon, and saw Brendan as a super-clean-cut Mountie
battling intrigue and megalomania in a small mountain town. Here,
Snidely Whiplash (Alfred Molina) is planning to buy up all the property
and then start a fake gold rush. Can Dudley stop him, and will he end up
with Sarah
Jessica Parker?
Once more, this was an appropriate role
for the shy and steady Fraser, not least because his
great-great-grandfather had been a Mountie in the late 19th Century. But
far more challenging was his next role, in Harold Ramis's Bedazzled, a
remake of the Peter Cook/ Dudley Moore classic. Here, Elizabeth
Hurley played a voluptuous Satan, granting tech-nerd Brendan seven
wishes he can use to win his true love, the excellent Frances O'Connor.
For these she will take his immortal soul but, hey, love is love.
Brendan evidently had a ball, playing a multitude of separate roles,
including a Columbian drug lord, a famous novelist, a rock star and
Abraham Lincoln.
The comedy continued in 2001 with Monkeybone. Here Brendan was a
cartoonist who falls into a coma and finds himself trapped in Dark Town,
a cartoon world of his own creation. Seeking help from the treacherous
title character (voiced by John Turturro), he gains an Exit pass from
Death (Whoopi Goldberg) only to have Monkeybone steal it and inhabit his
worldly body. Playing opposite animations is one of the hardest
cinematic tests - behaving as if you've been possessed by one is a
sterner challenge still. Yet Fraser came through with flying colours.
Next came another major money-spinner, with The Mummy Returns. Set 10
years after the original, it had Fraser now married to Weisz
and living in London with their young child. When Imhotep's mummy is
brought to the British Museum and re-animated once again, they must do
what they can to stop him unleashing an unspeakable evil upon the world.
And now there's the Scorpion King to contend with, too. It was all-out
action, Fraser managing to injure his knees, crack a rib and tear a
spinal disc in the process. He'd take a break in London's West End - the
place where he'd been turned on to acting so many years before - playing
Brick in Tennessee Williams' Cat On A Hot Tin Roof.
The Mummy Returns was a reasonable effort, and made a few billion bob,
but with a confused storyline and some weak computer generations it was
a disappointment after the rousing original. Brendan moved on to
something infinitely more serious, starring alongside Michael Caine in
Graham Greene's The Quiet American. Here Caine played a cynical and
drug-addled Times journalist in 1952 Saigon, who meets an idealistic aid
worker - Brendan. But Brendan is not all he seems, as Caine comes to
notice as social unrest turns to all-out war, and Brendan turns up
everywhere (not least in the bedroom of Caine's Vietnamese mistress). It
was a tough movie, charting the origins of the US war in south-east
Asia, and both Caine and Fraser were superb.
Now seen as an affable hero in the style of Cary Grant, Brendan also
continued to follow in the extreme slapstick footsteps of his own great
hero Buster Keaton by taking on the 'toons once more in Looney Tunes:
The Movie.
Having received $12.5 million for The
Mummy Returns, Fraser could now do pretty much as he pleased. And he
did, indulging his passions for travel, culture and photography. There
seems little doubt that this brilliant physical actor, a star with kids,
teens and now adults, will continue to find top roles and be able to
indulge himself to his heart's content for some considerable time to
come.~ Dominic Wills
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