Current Events > GQ interview with Brendan Fraser.

(+) Yeah! (+)

https://www.gq.com/story/what-ever-happened-to-brendan-fraser

He remade Bedazzled, with Elizabeth Hurley, in 2000. Did MonkeyBone and a Mummy sequel, The Mummy Returns, in 2001. Looney Toons: Back in Action, 2003. And on it wentin retrospect, far beyond where Fraser wanted it to go. I believe I probably was trying too hard, in a way that's destructive, Fraser says now. The films, in addition to having diminishing returns, were causing a physical toll: He was a big man doing stunts, running around in front of green screens, going from set to set. His body began to fall apart. By the time I did the third Mummy picture in China, which was 2008, I was put together with tape and icejust, like, really nerdy and fetishy about ice packs. Screw-cap ice packs and downhill-mountain-biking pads, 'cause they're small and light and they can fit under your clothes. I was building an exoskeleton for myself daily. Eventually all these injuries required multiple surgeries: I needed a laminectomy. And the lumbar didn't take, so they had to do it again a year later. There was a partial knee replacement. Some more work on his back, bolting various compressed spinal pads together. At one point he needed to have his vocal cords repaired. All told, Fraser says, he was in and out of hospitals for almost seven years.

When his episodes of The Affair began airing, in late 2016, Fraser was asked to give his first interview in years, for AOL's YouTube channel. It is an uncomfortable watch. Fraser seems morose and sad; for much of it, he speaks in a near whisper. The video went viral. In the months that followed, theories sprang up about what ailed him, focusing on his 2009 divorce and the fact that two franchises he'd once starred in, The Mummy and Journey to the Center of the Earth, had been rebooted and recast without him.

As it turns out, what was behind the sad Brendan Fraser meme wassadness. His mother had died of cancer just days before the interview. I buried my mom, Fraser says. I think I was in mourning, and I didn't know what that meant. He hadn't done press in a while; suddenly he was sitting on a stool in front of an audience, promoting the third season of a show he'd barely been on. I wasn't quite sure what the format was. And I felt like: Man, I got fucking old. Damn, this is the way it's done now?

It's a really in-depth interview, worth a full read.
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Interesting read

Didn't realize he had to undergo so many surgeries.
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Just finished it. Good read.

I now want to ride Fraser's horse and shoot arrows with him.
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They shouldn't have killed off his character in Scrubs. He fit into the cast perfectly.

It sucks that he put himself through so much just to be known as a sorta okay actor. I'd be down for an Airheads sequel though, I think they could make it pretty funny since they're all a lot older now.
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Im sorry to hear that he was injured so badly. My friend worked backstage on a lot of movie productions and he said Brendan Fraser is one of the nicest people youd ever meet (Elizabeth Banks, too).
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