Brendan Fraser

Brendan James Fraser ( ; born December 3, 1968) is a Canadian-American actor. Fraser had his breakthrough in 1992 with the comedy Encino Man and the drama School Ties. He gained further prominence for his starring roles in the comedies With Honors (1994) and George of the Jungle (1997) and emerged as a star playing Rick O'Connell in The Mummy trilogy (1999–2008). He took on dramatic roles in Gods and Monsters (1998), The Quiet American (2002), and Crash (2004), and further fantasy roles in Bedazzled (2000) and Journey to the Center of the Earth (2008). Fraser's film work slowed from the late 2000s to mid-2010s due to the poor box office performances of many of his films, and various health and personal problems, including the fallout from a sexual assault allegedly committed against him in 2003 by Philip Berk, the then-president of the Hollywood Foreign Press Association. Fraser branched into television with roles in the Showtime drama The Affair (2016–2017), the FX series Trust (2018), and the Max series Doom Patrol (2019–2023). His film career was revitalized by roles in Steven Soderbergh's No Sudden Move (2021) and Darren Aronofsky's The Whale (2022). Fraser's starring role as a morbidly obese gay man in the latter earned him critical acclaim and numerous accolades, including the Academy Award for Best Actor, becoming the first Canadian to win this category. Early life and education Fraser was born on December 3, 1968, in Indianapolis, Indiana, to Canadian parents Carol Mary (née Genereux) and Peter Fraser. He is the youngest of their four sons. His mother was a sales counselor, and his father was a former journalist who worked as a Canadian foreign service officer for the Government Office of Tourism. His maternal uncle, George Genereux, was the only Canadian to win a gold medal in the 1952 Summer Olympics, at the Olympic Trap. Fraser's three older brothers are Kevin, Regan, and Sean. They have Irish, Scottish, German, Czech, and French-Canadian ancestry. He holds dual Canadian and American citizenship. Fraser's family moved often during his childhood, living in Eureka, California; Seattle, Washington; Ottawa, Ontario; the Netherlands; and Switzerland. He attended Upper Canada College, a private boarding school in Toronto. While on vacation in London, England, in the 1970s, he attended his first professional theatre show, Oliver!, in the West End, which began his interest in acting.