Brendan Fraser

Fraser met actress Afton Smith at a barbecue hosted by Winona Ryder on July 4, 1993, shortly after moving to Los Angeles. The couple married on September 27, 1998, and had three sons together: Griffin, Holden, and Leland. Their eldest son, Griffin, was diagnosed with autism at age two, which later led Fraser to advocate for people on the autism spectrum and their families. Fraser and Smith divorced in 2009, and both later received community recognition for remaining actively engaged in co-parenting their children. Since September 2022, Fraser has been in a relationship with makeup artist Jeanne Moore, whom he thanked during his 2023 Academy Award acceptance speech.

Fraser experienced severe physical strain throughout his career as a result of performing his own film stunts. Over a seven-year period, he underwent multiple corrective surgical procedures, including a partial knee replacement, a spinal laminectomy, and vocal cord surgery. The physical toll, alongside the emotional impact of a 2003 sexual assault by Philip Berk, then-president of the Hollywood Foreign Press Association, his divorce, and the death of his mother, led to a prolonged period of depression and contributed to a significant hiatus from leading film roles.

Brendan James Fraser was born on December 3, 1968, in Indianapolis, Indiana, to Canadian parents Peter Fraser, a former journalist and foreign service officer for the Canadian Government Office of Tourism, and Carol Mary Fraser, a sales counselor. He is the youngest of four sons, alongside brothers Kevin, Sean, and Regan. Through his mother, Fraser is the nephew of George Genereux, who won an Olympic gold medal for Canada in trap shooting at the 1952 Summer Olympics in Helsinki. Due to his father's career, Fraser moved frequently as a child, living in Detroit, Seattle, Ottawa, the Netherlands, and Switzerland.

His interest in acting began during childhood visits to London in the 1970s, where attending West End stage productions such as Oliver!, The Mousetrap, and Jesus Christ Superstar inspired him to perform. Fraser attended a Montessori school in Detroit, the Sacred Heart School in Bellevue, Washington, and Upper Canada College in Toronto, graduating in 1987. He earned a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree in acting from Seattle's Cornish College of the Arts in 1990 before driving to Hollywood to begin his professional screen career.

Fraser made his feature film debut with a minor role in the 1991 drama Dogfight. His breakthrough arrived the following year when he played the thawed caveman Link in the comedy Encino Man (1992) alongside Sean Astin and Pauly Shore, followed by a dramatic turn as a private school quarterback confronting antisemitism in School Ties (1992) with Matt Damon and Ben Affleck. Throughout the mid-1990s, he built a diverse resume with roles in films such as With Honors (1994) opposite Joe Pesci and Airheads (1994) with Adam Sandler and Steve Buscemi.

Global commercial success came with the 1997 Disney comedy George of the Jungle, which earned more than $170 million worldwide. Fraser followed this with critical acclaim for his portrayal of gardener Clayton Boone in Bill Condon's biographical drama Gods and Monsters (1998) opposite Ian McKellen. In 1999, Fraser reached the peak of his commercial popularity by starring as adventurer Rick O'Connell in Stephen Sommers's fantasy adventure The Mummy. He reprised the role in The Mummy Returns (2001) and The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor (2008), establishing the franchise as a multi-billion-dollar box-office hit.

Alongside his action franchise work, Fraser took on varied roles in comedies such as Blast from the Past (1999) and Bedazzled (2000), dramatic features including Phillip Noyce's The Quiet American (2002) opposite Michael Caine, and Paul Haggis's Academy Award-winning ensemble drama Crash (2004). He also performed on the London stage in 2001 as Brick in Tennessee Williams's Cat on a Hot Tin Roof.

Following several commercial disappointments in the late 2000s, including Furry Vengeance (2010), Fraser shifted his focus to television projects. He joined the third season of Showtime's drama The Affair as prison guard Gunther and played Getty family investigator James Fletcher Chace in the 2018 FX anthology series Trust.

Fraser expanded his television presence by providing the voice and flashback performance for Clifford "Robotman" Steele in the DC series Titans and its spin-off Doom Patrol (2019-2023). His steady work across critically appreciated television series laid the foundation for an industry comeback that supporters and media outlets commonly termed "The Brennaissance."

Fraser returned to major film prominence in Steven Soderbergh's 2021 period crime drama No Sudden Move. Director Darren Aronofsky then cast him as Charlie, a reclusive, severely obese English teacher seeking to reconnect with his estranged daughter, in the drama The Whale (2022). Aronofsky had sought an actor for the part for a decade before deciding on Fraser after seeing him in a preview for the 2006 film Journey to the End of the Night.

To portray Charlie, Fraser wore a 200-pound prosthetic suit that initially took up to six hours to apply, and consulted with the Obesity Action Coalition to understand the lived experiences of individuals with severe obesity. The film premiered at the 2022 Venice International Film Festival, where Fraser received an emotional six-minute standing ovation. His performance earned critical praise and widespread honors, culminating in the Academy Award for Best Actor in 2023, making him the first Canadian to win in that category, as well as the Screen Actors Guild Award for Outstanding Performance by a Male Actor in a Leading Role.

Following The Whale, Fraser appeared in Martin Scorsese's historical crime drama Killers of the Flower Moon (2023) alongside Leonardo DiCaprio and Robert De Niro, the comedy Brothers (2024), the comedy-drama Rental Family (2025), and was cast to portray Dwight D. Eisenhower in the World War II film Pressure.