It’s been three years since Brendan Fraser launched his big comeback with The Whale. I had to double check the year he won the Best Actor Oscar (2023) because it truly feels like it’s been so much longer than that. That was also the year Ke Huy Quan won Best Supporting Actor for the spectacular Everything Everywhere All At Once. It was a big night for beloved actors and nostalgia.
Since then, Brendan has been busy with new projects, including the recently-announced The Mummy 4, which is in pre-production. His new movie, Rental Family, is out in theaters now. It’s a dramedy about an underemployed American actor in Japan who ends up working as a hired “stand-in” for strangers when they need someone to play a family member or a friend. During an interview with the AP, Brendan admitted that he related to his character because he struggles with self-confidence. Sometimes the voice in his head is so critical that it makes the Internet seem not-so-bad.
Rental Family (in theaters now), from writer-director Hikari, stars Fraser, 56, as an American actor working odd jobs in Tokyo, Japan. As the 2023 Best Actor Oscar winner joked to the Associated Press in a recent interview, the role may have served as a reminder: “Don’t get too comfortable. It can happen to me.”
“I struggle with confidence,” Fraser admitted. “I always have the feeling of not being good enough. Believe me, no one can be harder on me than me. No critic, no pithy internet comment can be more biting to me than myself in my private thoughts.”
That’s despite making a lauded comeback for his Oscar-winning performance in The Whale. “I grapple with overcoming that,” said the actor, recalling one of the two times he hosted Saturday Night Live. Producer Lorne Michaels, he recalled, told him, “‘You know, it’s all about confidence.’ I don’t know if that psyched me up or not.”
He added: “Forget everything you know and just own it. Can you do that is the question, the eternal one.”
Did becoming an Oscar winner change Fraser? “Honestly, I was kind of floating during that whole time without an agent,” he said. “I was looking for that unicorn project that hadn’t been made into oblivion. I ended up: What is a rental family? Which dog do you like at the pound? I like the one with four teeth and one tweaky eye.”
Hikari, the filmmaker behind Rental Family, “gave me the opportunity to kind of dovetail from whatever happens in the vacuum after you experience a recognition like that,” he recalled. “It was a moment of: I guess things are going to be a little different going forward.”
Retreating from Hollywood for a gig that required immersing himself in Japanese culture, Fraser added, “was personally what I needed. I wanted to remove myself from whatever this place is, just for a while.”
I also tend to be pretty hard on myself, so I understand where Brendan is coming from. I wonder if his mindset is part low self-esteem and part-defense mechanism against criticism in that ”You can’t hurt me because I’ve already hurt myself” kind of way. Regardless, I hate that Brendan feels that way. He should be kinder to himself. This isn’t the first time that he’s mentioned having these types of feelings, either. In a December 2022 interview, Brendan spoke about why he left Hollywood and how, at the time, he felt that he wasn’t “enough,” so he had to take a step back in order to protect his peace. It’s great that he was able to recognize that and had the means and ability to do so.
Anyway, I hadn’t heard of Rental Family before I read Brendan’s interview. It definitely has those “personal growth/feel good” vibes that make movies like it into sleeper or streaming hits. Right now, it has an 86% on Rotten Tomatoes and in general, critics seem to really like it. I wish nothing but good things for Brendan, so I hope it ends up doing well. I don’t know if I’ll be able to see it in theaters, but I will absolutely watch it when it’s streaming.
Photos credit: AMPAS/Avalon, Nicky Nelson/Wenn/Avalon, Juan Rico/Backgrid, Xavier Collin/Image Press Agency/Avalon, Getty