Brendan Fraser wins greatest actor for ‘The Whale’ at Oscars 2023
Brendan Fraser, whose profession has featured each meteoric success and semi-obscurity, celebrated maybe his best hour Sunday, successful the Oscar for lead actor for his efficiency in “The Whale.”
“So this is what the multiverse looks like!” Fraser proclaimed in his acceptance speech, thanking his director Darren Aronofsky for “throwing me a creative lifeline.”
Fraser’s highway to Oscar started with a six-minute standing ovation for his transformative efficiency in Darren Aronofsky’s movie at its premiere on the Venice International Film Festival final September.
Despite some controversy over his casting as a 600-pound, suicidal, homosexual professor and the depiction of morbid weight problems within the movie (primarily based on Samuel D. Hunter’s play), Fraser had gained greater than 20 lead actor prizes from critics’ teams together with the Critics’ Choice Assn., and picked up probably the most dependable Oscar precursor: the Screen Actors Guild Award.
Though Fraser has labored steadily in tv and smaller films lately, he hadn’t headlined a serious theatrical launch since 2010’s “Extraordinary Measures” with Harrison Ford. Before that, in fact, he had starring roles within the “Mummy” franchise, “Journey to the Center of the Earth,” greatest image winner “Crash,” “Gods and Monsters,” “George of the Jungle” and plenty of others.
Fraser has attributed his absence from the marquee partly to accidents suffered whereas enthusiastically filming his many motion films; he has additionally alleged that eight-term HFPA president Philip Berk sexually assaulted him. (Berk has denied the accusation, in addition to the actor’s open query as as to whether the Golden Globes had blacklisted him. Berk was later expelled from the group when it got here out he had despatched an e-mail calling Black Lives Matter a “racist hate movement,” spurring Globes broadcaster NBC to name for his elimination.)
Fraser, in the meantime, ended up sweeping the American televised movie appearing awards this season — aside from the Globes, which chosen Austin Butler‘s highly praised turn as the King of rock ‘n’ roll in “Elvis.” Fraser had stated prematurely he would “not participate” within the Globes ceremony.