Brendan Fraser was all over Hollywood in the early 90's up until the early-aughts ("Encino Man," "Airheads," "George of the Jungle," "Gods and Monsters," (far and away his best film) "The Mummy," "The Mummy Returns," "The Quiet American,""Crash," "Journey to the Center of the Earth," and "The Mummy 3." Not all movies I would recommend but all hits and he had screen presence to spare, tremendous screen presence.
Something happened after that third "Mummy" movie, which a remarkable and well-written GQ profile by Zach Baron entitled “the stupendous rise and surprising disappearance of [a] once ubiquitous movie star” examines.
In the article, which was published today, Fraser basically insinuates that he backed away from Hollywood, in part because he was sexually assaulted by former president of the Hollywood Foreign Press Association Philip Berk, this event supposedly occurred at an HFPA luncheon in 2003.
According to Fraser, Berk grabbed his ass, and that “one of his fingers touches me in the taint. And he starts moving it around … I felt like someone had thrown invisible paint on me,” Fraser said.
Fraser’s representatives asked the HFPA afterwards for a written apology and they did in fact write it, but it “admitted to no wrongdoing” and that stated that “Mr. Fraser’s version is a total fabrication.” Fraser eventually became depressed post-incident, which he states ensuingly “made me retreat. It made me feel reclusive.”
We all hope Fraser finds a way to make it back onscreen, not just for nostalgia’s sake but also for the fact that he is a nice guy that was dealt a bad hand somewhere along this crazy Hollywood ride he had. He has tried to stage a sort of comeback of late with HBO’s The Affair in ’16, and Jeffrey Wells has claimed that Fraser’s AOL encounter with Ricky Camilleri “is regarded as one of the saddest such interviews in entertainment history.” I’ll have to listen to that later today.
Up next for Fraser is FX’s "Trust," which is "Slumdog Millionaire" scribe Simon Beaufoy‘s miniseries on the John Paul Getty III kidnapping which is said to better than Ridley Scott's 'All the Money in the World," which was just released this past December to mixed reviews and revolved around the same story.