Brendan Fraser

The path to The Mummy ran through a prehistoric cave and a loincloth. Encino Man in 1992 got him noticed, but it was George of the Jungle (1997, $174 million at the box office) that established his template: goofy, physical, completely game. He did most of his own stunts on his action work, which gave his films an earnest quality they wouldn't have had otherwise. When The Mummy came out in 1999, audiences got an adventure hero who looked like he might actually survive one.

The Venice premiere of The Whale in 2022 ended with a six-minute standing ovation. Fraser reportedly stood in the light and cried. He won Best Actor at the 2023 Oscars and declined the Golden Globes that same year because he didn't think the HFPA's reforms had addressed his 2003 assault allegation against then-president Philip Berk. The award circuit treated it as a clean comeback story. Whether it is one depends on who's doing the accounting.

Getting choked unconscious on a film set should probably show up on an incident report somewhere. On the first Mummy shoot, a practical gag involving strangulation went wrong long enough for an EMT to revive him on set. The physical costs accumulated quietly: he'd starved himself for George of the Jungle, logged a laminectomy, a partial knee replacement, and vocal cord surgery, and described himself as 'put together with tape and ice' by the time the third Mummy wrapped. The career disappeared before anyone thought to ask why.