Brendan Fraser says his 2003 groping incident was 'causing me emotional distress' - Yahoo Entertainment

Brendan Fraser is poised for a vocation comeback — and perchance an Oscar — with his instrumentality to the large surface successful Darren Aronofsky's The Whale. In a caller interrogation with CBS Sunday Morning, the histrion opens up astir what made him measurement backmost from Hollywood successful the archetypal place.

Speaking to CBS's Lee Cowan, Fraser reflects connected his starring antheral presumption passim the '90s and 2000s acknowledgment to roles successful films similar Encino Man, School Ties, George of the Jungle and, astir notably, the blockbuster Mummy franchise.

"I think, that guy's truly lucky," the 54-year-old says present of his younger self, adding with a laugh, "I deliberation he's got awesome hair."

Fraser was a Hollywood heartthrob astatine the time, but says present that helium felt similar helium didn't rather measurement up.

"I felt astatine that clip that it wasn't enough," helium says. "I wasn't large enough, I wasn't chopped enough, oregon immoderate of those adjectives. And the idiosyncratic that I saw, and was trying to create, wasn't an perfect successful my mind. And however bash you contend with that?"

Fraser says helium "needed the euphony to stop" — which meant stepping backmost from Hollywood.

"We tin enactment actors connected pedestals and past sound them disconnected truthful rapidly and truthful easily," helium says. "It's astir similar that's the game. So I conscionable got escaped of the pedestal. I conscionable wanted to beryllium myself."

But it wasn't conscionable self-doubt that prompted Fraser's hiatus. In 2018, the divorced dada of 3 went nationalist astir a 2003 groping incident involving Philip Berk, the erstwhile Hollywood Foreign Press Association president. Though Berk has maintained that helium simply pinched the actor's bottommost arsenic a joke, Fraser has described the touching arsenic much invasive. (“His near manus reaches around, grabs my ass cheek, and 1 of his fingers touches maine successful the taint. And helium starts moving it around,” helium told GQ successful 2018.)

"It was causing maine affectional distress," helium says of the incident. "It was causing maine idiosyncratic distress."

He tells Cowan that up until that point, helium had "played by the rules" with respect to Hollywood's powerfulness dynamics. What happened with Berk was a wake-up telephone — and a enactment successful the sand.

"I felt similar OK, now, suddenly, I've been violated and it has gone excessively far," helium says. "And I volition nary longer abide this."

Fraser credits the #MeToo question with giving him the courageousness to stock his story.

"I spoke up due to the fact that I saw truthful galore of my friends and colleagues who astatine that clip were bravely emerging to talk their information power," Fraser tells Cowan. "And I had thing to say, too."