Brendan Fraser’s career renaissance which began with Darren Aronofsky’s The Whale was nominated for Best Actor at the Golden Globes 2023 – an occasion that affected the actor and his history with the association that conducts the award ceremony negatively. The past was drudged up in not so many words, and Fraser clarified his intentions and feelings about the HFPA.
What began as an incident of non-consensual assault two decades prior continues to haunt the actor to this day, and as such, Brendan Fraser’s crusade against the Hollywood Foreign Press Association and everything that it stands for still rages on.
Brendan Fraser Comments on the Golden Globes Award
The 80th Golden Globes, held at the Beverly Hilton on January 10th, 2023, was boycotted by one of its primary nominees in the Best Actor category for their shared history of the tainted past. In a 2018 GQ profile interview, Brendan Fraser had explicitly revealed the details of his assault experienced at the hands of the then-HFPA President, Philip Berk, at a 2003 luncheon in the Beverly Hills Hotel’s lounge. He has remained visibly absent from Hollywood ever since.
With an impressive comeback and multiple award nominations to his name, Fraser has hardly let the sudden glory bestowed on him at multiple film festivals and a front seat in watching the resurrection of his career blind him to the facts of his past. On Howard Stern’s show at SiriusXM, the actor claimed:
“[The Golden Globe] would mean nothing to me. I don’t want it. I didn’t ask to be considered even, that was presumed. They needed me, I didn’t need them. Because it wouldn’t be meaningful to me. Where am I gonna put that hood ornament? What would I do with that?”
His claims about the Globes being a hood ornament were also accompanied by a view of the cynicism with which some might perceive his crusade. He has claimed that the fight against the HFPA is his alone and “no one else’s… I don’t need everyone to stand in solidarity with me”. Austin Butler won Best Actor for his volatile and electrifying performance as Elvis Presley in the musical biopic directed by Baz Luhrmann.
Brendan Fraser’s Ambiguous Outlook on the Globes
The Academy Award-nominated actor had earlier claimed that despite his nomination at the Golden Globes, he would not be attending the award ceremony as a testimony to his past. In a statement to GQ in November 2022, Brendan Fraser revealed, “No, I will not participate… It’s because of the history that I have with them. And my mother didn’t raise a hypocrite. You can call me a lot of things, but not that.”
At the same time, however, he finds in himself the humility to appreciate the politically empowering statement that the Globes made this year by giving President Zelensky of Ukraine a platform to reach millions with his message against strife and war.
The 80th Golden Globes award ceremony can be streamed on Peacock.
Source: The Howard Stern Show
