Brendan Fraser He is preparing for a career comeback – and possibly an Oscar – with his return to the big screen in the Darren Aronofsky Whale. In a new interview with CBS Sunday Morningthe actor opens up about what made him step back from Hollywood in the first place.
Speaking to CBS’s Lee Kwan, Fraser reflects on his status as a leading person during the 1990s and 2000s thanks to his roles in films such as Encino Man, School Bonds, George of the Jungle Most notably the blockbuster movie mummy franchise.
“I suspect, This guy is really lucky.The 54-year-old now says of his younger self, adding with a laugh, “I think he has great hair.” “
Fraser was a Hollywood heartthrob at the time, but he says now that he feels like he’s not feeling right.
“I felt at the time that it wasn’t enough,” he says. “I wasn’t old enough, I wasn’t wounded enough, or any of those qualities. And the person I saw, and I was trying to create, wasn’t perfect in my mind. And how do you deal with that?”
Fraser says he “needed the music to stop” — which means stepping back from Hollywood.
“We can put actors on bases and then remove them quickly and easily,” he says. “It’s almost like this game. So I just got off my pedestal. I just wanted to be myself.”
But it wasn’t just self-doubt that prompted Fraser to stop. In 2018, the father of three divorced He went public about his groping incident in 2003 Including Philip Burke, former president of the Hollywood Foreign Press Association. Although Burke maintained that he only pinched the actor’s bottom as a joke, Fraser described the touch as more penetrating. (“His left hand stretches around us, grabs my butt cheeks, and one of his fingers touches mine. He starts to move it,” he said. GQ in 2018.)
“It caused me psychological distress,” he says of the accident. “It has caused me personal distress.”
He told Kwan that up until that point, he had “played by the rules” regarding power dynamics in Hollywood. What happened with Burke was a wake-up call — and a line in the sand.
“I felt fine, and now, all of a sudden, I was violated and it went too far,” he says. “And I will not commit to this anymore.”
Fraser is attributed to #Me too Movement while giving him the courage to share his story.
“I spoke up because I saw so many of my friends and colleagues who were at the time bravely standing out to speak of their true strength,” Fraser told Cowan. “And I had something to say, too.”
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