What happened to Brendan Fraser?

Michael McTighe

Studies Film Science & Movie Production at Columbia College Chicago (Expected 2025) May 9

What happened to Brendan Fraser, and why has Hollywood stopped casting him in movies?

The harsh truth is it was his appearance deteriorated.

Many people point out sexual harassment, or surgery, the latter probably is the explanation for why he stopped working out it seems, but the truth is almost of the other things other actors have bounced back from relatively unscathed.

Brendan Fraser was also getting a bit plump by the third The Mummy installment:

The surgeries almost certainly did not help, but that’s mostly because he worked out a niche as a leading man who did his own stunts, akin to Tom Cruise. While it’s impossible to know the extent to which the surgeries directly impacted his appearance, they certainly directly impacted his ability to do stunts. The problem for him, at the time, was nobody, certainly not the audience, and probably not Hollywood at large, thought Brendan Fraser was anything but a hunky heartthrob who did his own stunts. Obviously since seeing him in The Whale and shows like Doom Patrol he’s shown himself more capable of handling challenging material - but there was very little comparatively shown from him back then that would have made that pivot easy for him.

The truth is his appearance isn’t his fault - those were his genetics. He always had kind of a fat face, small head, and a big body, which is not common for leading men as it’s usually the reverse (big head, little body). The truth is though Brendan Fraser is being judged by an extreme standard most will never have to live down. Most people do not make it out of their 30s looking good, many out of their 20s. This works just fine for character actors, but Brendan Fraser was just not one of them (at the time). He was directly competing with the Tom Cruises and Brad Pitts, and had over a decade of being put up for those roles - he was in a “looking good” competition, so when he no longer looked good his roles all dried up.

I really liked The Whale, and ironically I always disliked Brendan Fraser back when he was young, so I’m actually glad he had this hiatus to re-invent himself. He’s the better for it. If he had never gotten injured, lost his hair, and gotten fat he’d probably be better looking now, yes, but he’d probably also be doing straight-to-streaming action movies alongside Scott Adkins or someone like that.