The Brendan Fraser renaissance is well and truly here, with him winning a massive Best Actor award for his performance in The Whale at the 2023 SAG Awards.
Fraser’s return to movies after a decade out of the mainstream due to blacklisting for speaking out against abuse in the industry has been fantastic. Well worth the wait, as his role in Darren Aronofsky’s The Whale, has seen him score the Outstanding Performance by a Male Actor in a Leading Role at this year’s Screen Actors Guild awards.
The 54-year-old actor was up against a cavalcade of fellow stars from other well-received films, such as Austin Butler from Elvis, Colin Farrell from The Banshees of Inisherin, Bill Nighy in Living, and Adam Sandler from Hustle. The win could pave the way for a potential Academy Award win in March, given many had guessed Butler would sweep the awards season without much of a rival.
The Whale is a huge success story for Fraser, with the whole release of the film feeling like the world giving the actor a warm hug. The film’s screening at Venice Film Festival saw an astonishing six-minute standing ovation which moved him to tears in one of 2022’s most heart-warming scenes.
The renaissance could go absolutely anywhere from here. Should he continue this momentum and win Best Actor, there’s a good chance he’ll become an A-list actor yet again and be allowed to shine in all sorts of roles. Fraser missed out on playing Firefly in the canceled Batgirl movie, but winning an Oscar is going to be much more important in the end.
