Fresh from his well-deserved Academy Award win as Best Actor for his portrayal of Charlie in Darren Aronofsky’s ‘The Whale‘, the accolades continue to pour in for Brendan Fraser, not just for his acting but for being an incredible guy.
Life has come full circle for one of the most likable actors in Hollywood. For being an all-around nice guy, everyone who grew up watching him can’t help but be happy for all the positive attention and critical acclaim he’s getting.
But not many people know the depths of kindness Brendan Fraser has. So it’s really no surprise that heartwarming stories of his acts of kindness are resurfacing. Mainly to celebrate the man and let the world know how great and generous he is.
This is exactly what FX artist Dave Rand did when he shared a 2007 anecdote about the Academy Award-winning actor.
Dave worked as an FX Lead for Montreal-based Meteor Studios on the sci-fi adventure movie “Journey to the Center of the Earth.” According to Dave, Brendan Fraser helped them in a big way when the studio went bankrupt.
At the time, the studio owed Dave and his FX team $1.3 million in salaries.
In a lengthy Twitter post published on March 13, 2023, Dave wrote that their paycheck stopped coming in November 2007 after the studio went bankrupt.
After convincing his crew to finish the work on the remaining shots and telling them they’d be paid overtime, Meteor Studios filed for bankruptcy.
Dave said they were escorted out after delivering the last shot. It was just before Christmas, and they’d just learned there won’t be any money coming in.
According to Dave, he tried to share their story with different news outlets in Hollywood. But a visual effects company going bust apparently wasn’t newsworthy. And it seemed like nobody wanted to publish the story because they were being pressured not to.
So Dave hired a PR company to help them with a press release. They also made a website where Dave and his team could communicate.
Moreover, Dave tried to make Brendan Fraser aware of the situation by contacting his team on his IMDB Pro page. They said they would relay the message to the actor but never did.
The Normes du Travail, which maintains labor standards in Quebec, advised Dave not to go to press with their story as it would only hurt his case.
But it wasn’t long before someone from New York City contacted Dave. After an hour, the story was published on Page Six, the gossip page of The Post.
And then, a few minutes later, the phone rang again with an NYC area code. Thinking it was the woman who wrote the piece, Dave was ready to thank her. Instead, it was a man asking if he was Dave Rand.
Dave said yes, and the man on the phone introduced himself as Brendan Fraser and asked what was going on.
It turned out that Brendan had no idea that the studio that went bankrupt had not paid Dave Rand and his team for their work in the movie. Brendan listened intently and asked a lot of questions.
More importantly, he promised to talk to Dave regularly until the studio that went bankrupt resolved the matter.
Brendan immediately got on it. He reached out to The Post to tell them that he’s only heard about it for the first time and was extremely upset about what happened to Dave and his team.
In short, Brendan publicly campaigned for Dave and his team so they’d get paid.
Almost two years after the story broke, Dave and his team finally got 80% of what they were owed.
Dave credits the victory to Brendan Fraser, whom he calls a ‘righteous dude’ because ‘he gave them wings when they had none.’ He used his celebrity status to give hardworking artists some leverage in a seemingly hopeless situation.
This makes Brendan Fraser one of Hollywood’s coolest, kindest, and humblest guys (right up there with Keanu Reeves, another seriously kind and down-to-earth actor). Read about how Keanu went out of his way to make an 80-year-old fan happy, and how Keanu made a mark on actress Octavia Spencer.
Before his incredible Oscar Best Actor win, Brendan Fraser starred in blockbusters like The Mummy (1999) and The Mummy Returns (2001). He also starred in cult favorites Encino Man (1992), Airheads (1994), and Mrs. Winterbourne (1996).
The Whale (2022) is his big movie comeback, where he plays a morbidly obese English teacher coming to terms with his life decisions while trying to reconnect with his estranged teenage daughter.
The role won him his first Academy Award, besting actors like Bill Nighy, Colin Farrell, Paul Mescal, and Austin Butler.