DiCaprio Had Just One Thing to Say About Brendan Fraser's On-Set Demeanor
Brendan Fraser now has achieved a rare feat in Hollywood - he managed to revive his career after temporarily falling into obscurity.
And this resurgence is not limited to The Whale (which earned him this year’s Academy Award for Best Actor).
Fraser also got a role in Killers of the Flower Moon, the film which is likely to become an important cinema event this year. After all, it is a high-budget historical crime drama, directed by no less of a luminary than Martin Scorsese, and boasting a whole constellation of stars among its cast, most notably Robert De Niro and Leonardo DiCaprio.
In this film, Fraser is playing W.S. Hamilton, a defense lawyer who gets involved with the tangled story of the infamous string of murders which shook the Osage nation and FBI’s investigation of those murders. While Fraser’s role is a supporting one, his character is nevertheless significant to the story.
This film not only provided Fraser with a role, but also with an opportunity to come face to face with DiCaprio again.
Before that they met each other briefly, nearly 30 years ago, after Fraser attended a screening of What’s Eating Gilbert Grape. In that film DiCaprio had a role that was both difficult and unpromising - he played intellectually disabled Arnie. But, against expectations, his performance was good enough to earn him his first Oscar nomination.
Fraser has a general reputation of being really nice to other people on set.
And back then, he more than lived up to it: he specifically went to meet DiCaprio and say how great the latter’s performance was. Even though he was just another actor starting his career, only a few years older than DiCaprio, his words must have really struck a chord.
And when the two finally met on the set of Scorsese’s new project, DiCaprio reminded Fraser of their first encounter, decades ago.
As Fraser reminisced, when recently interviewed by GQ: “He remembered me. He said: ‘You were the only guy who didn’t treat me like a little kid’. He volunteered that to me. That was meaningful.”
It is heartwarming to see Fraser’s encouragement, given right when DiCaprio needed it, returned to him at the moment when Fraser himself was in need of emotional support. Note, that at the time of their meeting, The Whale had not yet been released. So, when Fraser heard those meaningful words, it had yet to be seen whether his career would get a chance to rise from the rock bottom.