Brendan Fraser has been racking up praise and awards for his performance in The Whale. He’s even nominated for the Best Actor Oscar.
If you’re of a certain age, you probably saw him in the classic 1999 action film The Mummy. And if you’re like me, you have probably seen it, I don’t know, at least 10 times.
Well, Brendan recently went on The Kelly Clarkson Show and revealed that he almost died while filming the movie. Really.
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The Kelly Clarkson Show / Via youtu.be
Brendan told Kelly that the incident happened while they were filming a scene in which his character, Rick O’Connell, was about to be hung in a public square.
While he was “standing on his toes” with the rope around his neck, the film’s director, Stephen Sommers, ran over and made a request.
“‘Hey, it doesn’t really look like you’re choking — can you sell it?'” Brendan remembered. “And I was like, ‘All right, fine.’ So I thought, ‘One more take, man.'”
“And the camera swooped around and I went up on the toes, and the guy holding the rope above me, he pulled it up a little higher and I was stuck on my toes — I had nowhere to go but down. And so he was pulling up and I was going down.”
“My elbow was in my ear, the world was sideways, there was gravel in my teeth and everyone was really quiet.” Y I K E S.
Obviously, Brendan quite literally lived to tell the tale — but it was a close one, and upon coming to, he was informed that he’s not the first one who’s experienced such a situation.
“‘Congratulations, you’re in the club — the same thing happened to Mel Gibson on Braveheart,'” Brendan says he was told, joking that his response was, “Thanks, I think?! I wanna go home!”
Watch the whole interview here.
