Brendan Fraser Reflects on Health Struggles During the 2000s When His Body Began To “Fall Apart”

During a recent conversation for Variety’s Actors on Actors, Brendan Fraser opened up about a moment in his career when his body began to “fall apart” and he had to rethink why he was doing the physically demanding roles he had taken on.

Dwayne Johnson, who was speaking with Fraser, noted the actor’s strong presence and asked when he decided to start performing for himself rather than for others.

Fraser reflected on a period around 2007 to 2009 when he was filming a low-budget movie in Sault Ste. Marie, Ontario. The work involved rolling around in streams, jumping off mountains, and improvising stunts, all while he was already injured.

“There comes a point where you fall apart. And I guess around 2007 or ’08 or ’09, around there, I was doing a movie in Sault Ste. Marie, Ontario — it was a low-budget thing, and we were rolling around in streams and off of mountains, making stuff up as we go along. And I was playing hurt but pretending that I wasn’t,” Fraser said.

He explained that finishing the movie made him realize his body was starting to catch up with him. “I thought, ‘I’m getting too old for this s***. It’s starting to catch up with me. If I’m going to continue, I have to have a real reckoning with myself about why I am getting banged around and bruised.’ I had to actually ask myself a serious question that I’d been avoiding: Why am I doing this? I had to take ownership of the reason, and that was [that] I was trying too hard.”

Fraser added that he had been living with the idea that unless a role physically hurt him, he wasn’t earning it. He compared this to Johnson’s work in The Smashing Machine, saying, “We feel for the supposedly invulnerable titan. But how do you bring them down with just a minor injury that takes them apart? Not allowing oneself to be vulnerable publicly — the stoicism seems harder than the loss. That was when I went, ‘Oh, man, Dwayne, you’ve done it.’”

The actor had previously revealed in 2018 that the stunts and physical demands of his roles over the years led him to undergo multiple surgeries. These included a partial knee replacement, a laminectomy, and vocal-cord surgery, all of which took place over a seven-year period.

Fraser’s comments highlight the toll that action and physical comedy can take on an actor’s body and the importance of recognizing personal limits.

What do you think about Fraser’s journey and the sacrifices actors make for their roles? Share your thoughts in the comments.