Fraser spoke about his iconic role as George in 'Variety's latest 'Actors on Actors' issue.
Brendan Fraser went to great lengths to achieve that chiseled physique he had in 1997's George of the Jungle. In Variety's latest Actors on Actors issue, Fraser spoke with friend and former co-star Adam Sandler about nearly starving to portray the film's leading man.
"The wardrobe there was no wardrobe. George wears a loincloth," Fraser said of the famously muscled-up George.
But with that loincloth came an intense diet and training regimen that left Fraser so starved of carbohydrates that he forgot his own ATM PIN.
"I was waxed. Starved of carbohydrates. I would drive home after work and stop to get something to eat. I needed some cash one day, and I went to the ATM, and I couldn’t remember my PIN number because my brain was misfiring," he recalled. "Banging on the thing. I didn’t eat that night."
Fraser did a 180 for his role in The Whale, where he plays a reclusive English teacher named Charlie, who is living with obesity. The 54-year-old actor described the intricate costume he donned for the film, which included a harness.
"There was a five-point harness that had me strapped in. Once into it, I was in there all day until it came off. The costume pieces themselves contained combinations of those little airsoft pellets, maybe dried beans, marbles. But the rule was that the whole look should obey the laws of physics and gravity, because we don’t see that in films," Fraser explained.
He continued, "And I really looked at what the Farrelly brothers did. I looked at what Mike Myers did, what Eddie Murphy did. That’s just in the last 20 years. Anything before then, it’s a cut-out silhouette of a costume that’s stuffed with batting, and it’s just an athletic actor inside the suit. And it was all in the service of a mean joke."
While the costume helped contribute to the 600-pound frame Fraser was meant to embody, he also put on weight for the film.
"It’s important to say this, because there are those who live with this disease. I felt empowered to be their voice and to be as honest as I could and as authentic as I could in the portrayal," Fraser said of the major transformation he underwent to play the part. "Look, my weight has been all over the map. I put on weight to play this role, and it wasn’t enough — so the body had to go on top of that, and the two worked together."
Speaking to ET about the role, Fraser said he dove into both Charlie's external and internal struggles, describing him as someone who is "harming himself for his broken heart, and that's been through overeating."
"The point is he's a person, he's a man, and he's so much more than who he would appear to be to the world," he shared. "It's so easy to be cynical and dismiss others that way when we know the challenge of connecting with those is what brings us closest together."
"His time is limited," Fraser added of Charlie who tries to reconnect with his estranged daughter, played by Stranger Things star Sadie Sink. "He wants very much to connect with his daughter. Because there's the tension that we're not always certain if he can, or if he's going to make it."
The Whale is out in limited release on Dec. 9, and opens wide on Dec. 21.
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