- Brendan Fraser recalled a near-death experience while filming the 1999 film “The Mummy.”
- The actor blacked out while shooting a hanging scene.
- “The next thing I knew my elbow was in my ear, the world was sideways,” he recalled.
“The Mummy” remains one of Brendan Fraser’s most memorable films — but according to the actor, it also could have been his last.
During an appearance on “The Kelly Clarkson Show” this week, Fraser revealed how shooting one particular scene, a hanging sequence, went awry.
“I was standing on my toes like this with the rope [around my neck], and you only got so far to go,” he said.
Director Stephen Sommers wasn’t fully convinced by Fraser’s performance, however, and asked the actor to “sell it.”
“Steve ran over, and he said, ‘Hey, it doesn’t really look like you’re choking,’” Fraser explained. “‘Can you sell it? All right, fine.’ So I thought, ‘One more take, man.’ 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. I was stuck on my toes. I had nowhere to go but down. So he was pulling up, and I was going down.”
The actor blacked out, as a result.
“The next thing I knew my elbow was in my ear, the world was sideways, there was gravel in my teeth, and everyone was really quiet,” Fraser added. “There was a stunt guy, a coordinator was there, and he was going, ‘Brendan! Brendan! Wake up!’”
When Fraser gained consciousness, the stuntman offered him some encouragement.
“Congratulations, you’re in the club,” the stunt guy told him. “Same thing happened to Mel Gibson on ‘Braveheart.’”
In 2014, Gibson recalled what happened on the set of “Braveheart” to The Independent, saying, “There was a horse that nearly killed me. He had a good trick where he did this whole rear-up thing, but he’d also fall backwards, which is a problem if you’ve fallen off first and you’re behind him.”
“He did that to me. My stunt double ran in and pulled me out of the way just as the horse fell,” Gibson added.
But fortunately for Fraser (and fans around the world), the actor walked away unscathed.
Since then, Fraser has mounted a career comeback with his moving performance as Charlie in “The Whale,” which recently earned him a SAG award for male actor in a leading role, as well as an Oscar nomination for best actor in a leading role.
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