Culture
Why Brendan Fraser mentions that after winning an Oscar he still has to “work a little bit harder
Brendan Fraser says winning an Oscar has made him more deliberate — “I have to work a little bit harder”
Brendan Fraser firmly maintains that his Oscar at the Academy hasn’t made him a complacent. In fact, it has made him more purposeful. The 56-year-old told PEOPLE at the SCAD Savannah Film Festival on Oct. 29 that his 2023 Oscar for Best Actor win changed his approach to acting and the ways of his.
“The thing that has changed is that I have to work a little bit harder now,” Fraser said, pointing to the higher expectations that come with an Oscar. He also said that he has become very selective and a few things of some projects only in terms of the work he will do.
Fraser, whose first leading role after his Oscar-winning performance in The Whale is Rental Family, talked about the win as a factor that has changed his way of checking the scripts and career offers.
Brendan Fraser: Oscar raised the bar — “I need to work a bit more”
Brendan Fraser maintains that his Academy Award has not made him lose his drive — it has made him more purposeful. The 56-year-old told PEOPLE at the SCAD Savannah Film Festival on Oct. 29 that getting the 2023 Oscar for Best Actor changed the way he sees his career and the roles he takes.
“I must feel that there are still a lot of challenges waiting for me,” Fraser says. “I have to be more paying attention in finding material that is innovative, new, interesting, unique, and different from whatever I did before so that I always feel that I am learning something.”
Brendan Fraser is here with Rental Family, his first film as a lead after his Oscar-winning performance in The Whale. The movie, directed by Hikari, is about an American actor who can’t find his purpose until he gets a weird job: working for a Japanese “rental family” agency, being a stand-in for people he doesn’t know.
Brendan Fraser: Oscar win made me go for work that challenges me
”As he dives into the lives of his clients, he really starts to feel a connection with them which makes it hard for him to distinguish between acting and reality,” the synopsis for Rental Family reads. ”After facing the moral difficulties of his job, he finds again in himself a new sense of purpose, belonging and the calm of human connection.”
This is a story of change for Fraser, a change that is very different from his work in The Whale – which he referred to as his ”most emotionally demanding” role of the whole career. He briefly mentioned that fight in his Oscars speech: ”I started in this business 30 years ago and things weren’t easy for me but I had a certain facility which I didn’t really appreciate at the time until it ceased. So I just want to say thank you for this acknowledgement.”
Brendan Fraser admits new film prompted him to re-evaluate what family means
Fraser at TIFF honored director Hikari and referred to the film as an intimate look at belonging
At the Toronto premiere of the film in September, Brendan Fraser recounted that the film made him “rethink the concept of family.” “It’s a film that I believe will meet everyone’s need to feel that they belong somewhere in the world, even when they are at their lowest,” he said to the crowd. “And I know that I am not supposed to say it is a good film, but it really is a good film. Hikari is a fresh and talented director in the field, and I have the privilege and the right to say, ‘Well, I knew her when.’ Just see it, in the coming years.”
