But will the general public embrace “The Whale” when A24 opens it in December? After all, it’s been a rough period for adult dramas, with last year’s crop of awards contenders, such as “Belfast,” “Spencer” and “Licorice Pizza,” wilting at the box office. The Oscar buzz has continued to build with each screening, and festival crowds clearly love what Fraser and Aronofsky have done.
#PROTA ZOA ACTOR PROFESSIONAL#
And that kind of response feels completely new in my professional life.” “I was emotional because it was acknowledgment that what we did is making an impact. Dwayne Johnson, his “Mummy” co-star, even shared the footage on social media, causing a fresh wave of retweets and likes. Video of Fraser tearing up at the Venice Film Festival went viral on Twitter and TikTok (Aronofsky is quick to note that, headlines aside, Fraser was “choked up, not crying”). On the festival circuit, audiences have flipped for “The Whale,” showering Fraser with a boisterous six-minute standing ovation at the Venice Film Festival, and then nearly exceeding that in Toronto, where organizers had to shush the crowd in order to begin a post-screening Q&A. “We wouldn’t leave a scene unless we were spent,” Aronofsky says.īrendan Fraser: “I’m in a place now where not only do I want to do the heavy lifting with my body, I also want to do it with my mind.”
That scene, in which Charlie is losing control in a paroxysm of grief and self-loathing, is as hard to watch as the dramatic descent into addiction that takes up the final section of “Requiem for a Dream.” In order to capture that on-screen, Aronofsky and Fraser committed to pushing themselves to the breaking point. With this movie, everything I had to offer is everything that you see on the screen.”Īronofsky demanded a lot from his star, asking him to show Charlie at his most desperate points, including a harrowing sequence in which he gorges himself on pizza, junk food and anything that he can find in his refrigerator. “If I’m not approaching each day’s work as if it’s the first and last time I ever act, then I’m not the man for the job. After sitting on the sidelines for years, Fraser was primed to remind Hollywood what it had been missing. With “The Whale,” Aronofsky found a performer in Fraser who was eager to push himself physically and emotionally. It’s about getting the right role in the right moment as an actor.” “Brendan was beloved, but he just didn’t have that opportunity to show all these sides. “With Mickey, there was a lot of negative energy around him because of the middle finger that he gave to the industry,” Aronofsky says. After all, this is the same director who helped engineer Mickey Rourke’s comeback with “The Wrestler,” though he dismisses comparisons between Rourke’s situation and Fraser’s. And he’s shown a willingness to bet on talent that has been pushed aside by the entertainment business. In “Requiem for a Dream,” he reminded audiences of Ellen Burstyn’s power by casting her as an elderly woman addicted to diet pills, and in “Black Swan,” he explored the darker side of Natalie Portman’s lacquered celebrity by tapping her to play a ruthlessly ambitious ballerina. Pretty soon, he starts to break your heart.”Īronofsky has made a career out of taking established stars and toying with their personas. Then, within 20 minutes, they’re starting to fall in love with the character, because there’s just something about Brendan. “I knew he could play someone who most people would start off by dismissing, but within five minutes they’d start to feel something for him.
“As soon as he left my office after our first meeting, I felt it,” says Aronofsky, sitting next to Fraser in the baronial lobby of New York City’s Bowery Hotel on a crisp fall day. There was a haunted, vulnerable quality to the man that the director thought would be perfect. It was only after he happened to see a trailer for a “low-budget Brazilian movie” Fraser appeared in that Aronofsky had the idea of casting the actor. At times, he grew defeated, enlisting filmmakers like George Clooney, Tom Ford and Janicza Bravo to take over. Hunter’s play “The Whale” to the screen and meeting with nearly every actor of a certain age in Hollywood, Aronofsky feared he would never be able to find his Charlie. After spending a decade trying to bring Samuel D.
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