Brendan Fraser’s action hero experience came in surprisingly handy for ‘The Whale’

Brendan Fraser is known for his versatile acting skills and the ability to capture audience members’ attention with every single character he portrays. Many would recognize Fraser for his starring roles in action films George of the Jungle,  The Mummy franchise, The Journey to the Center of the Earth franchise, etc. 

Fraser, who triumphantly returned to acting in recent years after allegedly being blacklisted, opened up about how those movies helped him prepare for 2022’s The Whale. In the film, Fraser plays Charlie, an obese teacher that tries to mend his broken relationship with his daughter despite remaining secluded from the outside world. For The Whale, Fraser was required to wear a prosthetic suit that weighed 300 pounds.

During a Dec. 5 interview with Collider, Fraser revealed that the physical labor he had to do in his other movies taught him how to use his body. The 54-year-old said, 

“Anything that I had to do where it required effort, physical effort. Action films and comedy sequences and stunts and all of that, that can be painted with a pretty broad brush, but it taught me to come from a place of just using the body.”

Fraser wrapped up the conversation by disclosing that he could make Charlie’s role more believable because he was able to physically maneuver the prosthetic suit and complete specific tasks such as getting up. 

“Charlie needed to do a deadlift like an Olympic athlete every time he stood up, and the gear that I was wearing, the apparatus and the makeup, while it was cumbersome, it was necessary to sell the gravity that he would have to live with. I know that probably in the movies that I’ve made in that way, in terms of having a real objective to sell a character’s physicality and his body, all those types of roles all came into play when we did Charlie.”

Since The Whale’s debut at various film festivals, fans and critics everywhere have been raving over Fraser’s performance. One particular moment occurred in September 2022 at the Venice International Film Festival when Fraser received a six-minute standing ovation. 

The Whale is set to be released in theaters on Dec. 9. You can read our review here.