Brendan Fraser reveals why Darren Aronofsky cast him in The Whale

Following Brendan Fraser's career slump, the actor regained popularity once again after his role on Darren Aronofsky's The Whale hit the spotlight worldwide earning the actor an Academy Award for The Best Actor.

During a conversation at the Red Sea Film Festival, the actor spoke about the real reason why Aronofsky cast him in the role of Charlie. He also gave a sneak peek into the films he is working on and the production stage that they are in.

He shared, "He (Aronofsky) was looking for an actor who hadn't been seen in a while. He told me. And that was me. He wanted to reintroduce that actor through a performance that would be transformative and have an element of this is the last person you might expect to do this role."

And that was great with Fraser, who said that he was pleased with the "Brenaissance" memes to highlight one of Hollywood's most spectacular career comebacks. "Yes, look at me," he exclaimed from the stage of Old Town Al-Balad in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia.

He also emphasised the importance of taking a break in work and said that he preferred to describe his break from Hollywood as a mid-career break than a slump. “Taking a break is important in any line of work. In my career, it’s been a trajectory that’s been like a roller coaster loop. It’s up, it’s down, it’s sideways. It’s in the dark. It’s thrilling,” he noted, adding that he used the time to cook, learn archery apart from taking the time to retrospect and think from within.

Then, in 1997, he achieved his success with George of the Jungle, which made him a Hollywood star in the real sense."It was exciting, then. I didn't like the working out part, though. That hurt. I had to do that frequently," Fraser added.

"What you think you're going to do, and what you create and what turns out are vastly different things. When that film came out, it had a broad international appeal and a lot of monkeys," he recalled.

Up next he is working on Searchlight’s Tokyo-Shot Rental Family and revealed that he is entering into production. "I finished a film earlier this year in Japan called Rental Family, the director, Hikari… is a Japanese American who has written a story about what it means to have a family as not being the one necessarily that we were born into, but whom we encounter and collect in our lives," said Fraser.

He added, "Rental Family is an absurd sounding, funny title in itself but you can rent just about anything in Tokyo: a hat, a go-kart and a family."