Brendan Fraser is finally starring in a new film.
A24 released a first image from Darren Aronofsky’s upcoming drama “The Whale” on Tuesday. Fraser stars in the film as a man living with obesity who struggles to reconnect with his 17-year-old daughter, played by Sadie Sink of “Stranger Things.”
“The Whale” will debut at the 2022 Venice Film Festival, which starts on Aug. 31, according to a tweet from the production studio.
Joining Fraser and Sink in the cast are Hong Chau, Samantha Morton and Ty Simpkins.
“It’s gonna be like something you haven’t seen before,” Fraser told Unilad in 2021 about his performance in “The Whale.” “That’s really all I can tell you.”
In an interview with Newsweek that same year, Fraser said: “The wardrobe and costume was extensive, seamless, cumbersome. This is certainly far removed from anything I’ve ever done but not to be coy ... I do know it’s going to make a lasting impression.”
Fraser was a major star in the 1990s and early 2000s ― leading the “Mummy” franchise and 1997’s “George of the Jungle” — before his career began to wane amid a series of personal struggles.
In a 2018 GQ profile, Fraser said his body began to deteriorate after he had to endure multiple surgeries due to action sequences in many of his films. He got divorced from his wife Afton Smith in 2008, and his mother died in 2016.
But Fraser has suggested the thing that really shattered him, and led to his hiatus from the spotlight, was an incident in summer 2003, in which Fraser says Philip Berk, a former president of the Hollywood Foreign Press Association, sexually assaulted him.
“I felt ill. I felt like a little kid,” Fraser said of the alleged incident. “I felt like there was a ball in my throat. I thought I was going to cry.”
Fans, however, have not forgotten Fraser, and during an online meet-and-greet for “Mummy” fans last year, he got a little emotional when he learned that people on Twitter were rooting for his return to the big screen.
“There are so many people out there who love you,” Lindley Key, Fraser’s co-host and fan, told him. “And we’re rooting for you, and we can’t wait to see what you do next.”
Fraser’s visibility has been growing again in the past few years — beginning with a supporting role in Season 3 of “The Affair” in 2016, and a main role on “Doom Patrol” for DC Universe and HBO Max starting in 2019. Last year he had a supporting role in Steven Soderbergh’s “No Sudden Move,” but “The Whale” will mark his official comeback as a leading actor in a film.
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