Brendan James Fraser (born December 3, 1968) is a Canadian-American film and stage actor.
Background
Ethnicity:
Son of Peter and Carol Fraser; Married Afton Smith, September 27, 1998 (separated December 2007); children: Griffin Arthur, Holden Fletcher, Leland Francis.
Fraser was born in Indianapolis, Indiana, the son of Canadian parents. His mother, Carol Mary (née Genereux), was a sales counselor, and his father, Peter Fraser, 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. Fraser has three older brothers: Kevin, Regan, and Sean. His surname is properly pronounced /ˈfreɪzər/, not /ˈfreɪʒər/. The correct pronunciation of his surname is a running gag in Dickie Roberts: Former Child Star, in which his character's surname is pronounced /frɛrəˈʒʊər/. His ancestry includes Irish, Scottish, German, Czech, and French Canadian.
His family moved often during his childhood, living in Eureka, California, Seattle, Ottawa, the Netherlands, and Switzerland. Fraser attended the private boys' boarding school,Upper Canada College, in Toronto. While on vacation in London, Fraser attended his first professional theatrical performance at the West End. He graduated from Seattle's Cornish College of the Arts in 1990. He began acting at a small acting college in New York. He originally planned on attending graduate school in Texas but stopped in Hollywood on his way south and decided to stay in Los Angeles and work in movies.
Career
In Gods and Monsters (98, Bill Condon) Ian McKellen said that he was as occupied as he could be learning from Fraser’s rapport with the camera. It’s easy to see Fraser in gorgeous romance—less easy to see him in darkness, much less gloom. But he begins to show signs of tragic ambition.
His parents are Canadian, and the boy traveled widely in early life. He studied theatre at Cornish College in Seattle and made his debut in Dogfight (91, Nancy Savoca). In Encino Man (92, Les Mayfield), he was the Cro-Magnon who has to cope with modern suburban L.A. He was very good as the Jewish boy at the prep school in School Ties (92, Robert Mandel); Younger and Younger (93, Percy Adlon); Twenty Bucks (93, Keva Rosenfeld); Airheads (93, Michael Lehmann); a Harvard man in With Honors (94, Alek Keshishian); The Scout (94, Michael Ritchie); Mrs. Winterbourne (96, Richard Benjamin); George of the Jungle (97, Sam Weisman); gay in Twilight of the Golds (97, Ross Marks); as a young man in L.A. kept in a fallout shelter for thirty-five years in Blast from the Past (99, 11 ugh Wilson)—his funniest work yet.
His biggest hit came in The Mummy (99, Stephen Sommers), yet in truth he was rather wasted having to make worried faces at special effects. For Fraser is good enough to see the peril in real people. Dudley Do-Biglit (99, Wilson) cashed in on his stupid decency and cast him as the Mountie. He was the chump who deals with the devil (Elizabeth Hurley) in the remake of Bedazzled (00, Harold Ramis); Monkeybone (01, Henry Selick) was another good idea not worked out. The Mummy Returns (01. Sommers) didn’t even bother to disguise its being too much of a good thing.
It’s now that the beast awakes. In London, he played Brick on stage in a revival of Cat on a Hot Tin Roof and in movies he attempted the Andie Murphy role (no joke) in The Quiet American (02, Phillip Noyce).
FILMOGRAPHY AS ACTOR
Furry Vengeance (1-Apr-2010) · Dan Sanders
Extraordinary Measures (22-Jan-2010) · John Crowley
Inkheart (11-Dec-2008)
The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor (31-Jul-2008)
Journey to the Center of the Earth (11-Jul-2008)
The Air I Breathe (8-Feb-2007)
The Last Time (5-Oct-2006) · Jamie Bashant
Journey to the End of the Night (28-Apr-2006)
Crash (10-Sep-2004)
Looney Tunes: Back in Action (9-Nov-2003)
The Quiet American (9-Sep-2002) · Alden Pyle
The Mummy Returns (29-Apr-2001)
Monkeybone (23-Feb-2001)
Bedazzled (19-Oct-2000)
Sinbad: Beyond the Veil of Mists (3-Feb-2000) [VOICE]
Dudley Do Right (21-Aug-1999) · Dudley Do-Right
The Mummy (16-Apr-1999)
Personality
In so many happy ways, Brendan Fraser is a throwback—to the days of such expert idiot coinedy as Ralph Bellamy practiced, or even to the silent era. He has a face that registers hurt hopes and innocent optimism as easily as a child’s, and without a tremor of Method neurosis.
In a cleverly arranged series of films, he has played a large, handsome, manly goof thrust out of his own time or against the grain of modern cynicism, and handling the tension with sweet good humor. He is a comedian of such confident understatement that.