The “Brenaissance” continues: Brendan Fraser won his first Academy AwardSunday at the 95th Oscars. Fraser was awarded Best Actor in a LeadingRole for his performance as Charlie, a reclusive English teacher whoattempts to reconnect with his estranged teenage daughter (Sadie Sink)in the Darren Aronofsky-directed drama The Whale. The fan-favorite54-year-old actor has been a staple of the awards circuit, taking homethe Screen Actors Guild Award and nominations at the Golden Globes andthe BAFTAs. Fraser was among a class of first-time nominees and competedin the Best Actor category against Austin Butler for Elvis, Colin Farrell for The Banshees of Inisherin, Paul Mescal for Aftersun, and Bill Nighy for Living.
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“So this is what the multiverse looks like,” Fraser joked when accepting his award, thanking the Academy and studio A24 “for making such a bold film.”
“I’m grateful to Darren Aronofsky for throwing me a creative lifeline and hauling me aboard the good ship The Whale, that was written bySamuel D. Hunter who is our lighthouse. Gentlemen, you laid yourwhale-sized hearts bare so that we could see into your souls like no oneelse could do,” Fraser added, thanking his fellow nominees. “It is my honor to be named alongside you in thiscategory. I wanted to tell you that only whales can swim at the depth ofthe talent of [Fraser’s Oscar-nominated co-star] Hong Chau. I started in this business 30 years ago, andthings didn’t come easily to me.”
Fraser continued: “There was a facility that I didn’tappreciate at the time until it stopped. And I just want to say thankyou for this acknowledgment because it couldn’t be done without mycast. It’s been like a bit of a diving expedition on the bottom of theocean, and the air and the line to the surface is on a launch beingwatched over by some people in my life, like my sons Holden and Lelandand Griffin… Thank you again. Each one and all. I’m so grateful toyou.”
The Oscar-winning makeup and hairstyling team of Adrien Morot, Judy Chin, and Annemarie Bradley painstakingly transformed Fraser into a 600-pound man through makeup, prosthetics, and a full-body artificial skin suit, creating a believably housebound online teacher in the drama set within the confines of Charlie’s apartment.
“Nobodyelse would’ve went through that,” Morot told Entertainment Weekly of Fraser’s commitment to wearing the 200-pound prosthetics suit.”Everybody would’ve run away and called me crazy and gotten me fired.But Brendan used that to actually find his character. We had made alightweight version of the understructure, and Brendan tried it, butwhen we were getting ready to dress him up again, he was like, ‘You knowwhat? I’m going to go with the heavy one. This is not Charlie.’”
Fraser’s career comeback role comes decades after his most famous roles — 1992’s Encino Man, 1997’s George of the Jungle, 1999’s The Mummy, 2000’s Bedazzled — and his less-famous parts in 2010’s Furry Vengeance and 2014’s animated The Nut Job, which would mark Fraser’s last major film roles until his acclaimed turn in The Whale.
“I think it was the night that I was shooting a scene wherein I was beingmauled by a bear [in the animal-comedy Furry Vengeance], and I was in a Porta Potty, and the Porta Potty gotinverted, and I was on my head, and all this Gatorade and stuff droppedon my head that made me have a conversation with myself: ‘Is this worthit? Maybe I should reprioritize myself and stop working with animals,’” Fraser recalled in an actor’s roundtable with The Hollywood Reporter. “Look, I stepped back for a number of reasons. I had some chips and dingsin the paint [injuries], and the business had changed a lot, too. I hadto grow back into it and get back the real hunger that I had to tellstories.”
See reactions to Fraser’s first Oscar win below.
