The Story of Brendan Fraser: Does Hollywood build or crush dreams?

In the early 2000s, Fraser was quite a heartthrob. He was very good-looking and soft-spoken and simply put, just charming. The very first movie he starred in was California Man, which was based on the adventures of a California man in the 90s. Its ratings were quite poor as many critics deemed it as a sill comedy. In 1997 however, his fame blew up when the movie George of the Jungle was released.

This movie conquered the hearts of many viewers and earned about $174 million worldwide. Pretty impressive, huh?! What’s even more impressive, Fraser did all the stunts by himself but that doesn’t mean it didn’t have its own challenges. In his own words, he recalled, “I was a walking steak. “I remember once I was hoisted on a crane 60 feet in the air, I had to swing down at 30 miles per hour for a 300-foot swoop.” He got injured but that didn’t stop him from pursuing his dreams.

What’s heartbreaking is that in 2003, Fraser kind of went under the radar and we stopped seeing him on the big screens. Why? Because of a sexual assault, he experienced while leaving an HFPA-hosted luncheon at the Beverly Hills Hotel. When he opened up about it he said, “I felt ill. I felt like a little kid. I felt like there was a ball in my throat. I thought I was going to cry. I felt like someone had thrown invisible paint on me.” He admitted that what gave him the courage to open up was after seeing many of his friends and colleagues also opening up in an attempt to fight the sexual assault that is so common in Hollywood.

Makes you wonder, does Hollywood really build dreams or are they busy crashing these dreams? I can’t help but ask myself, how many of these cases have been swept under the rug, I mean, for those who were afraid to speak up because maybe Hollywood was their only ticket to success and realized dreams, what kind of hell are they going through right now? It makes me sick to the stomach to hear so many stories of people in power literally taking advantage of that and squishing people they believe are beneath them. Will the story ever change? And you know what the saddest bit of it is? That this continues to happen and nobody gives a shit. Even pedophilia is now becoming an acceptable behavior. I mean, you saw what the Balenciaga ad campaign was busy propagating. It’s a sick world we live in, and this sickness keeps on spreading. Are our children safe? Are we safe?