There's a reason the saying "never work with children or animals" has endured for so long in the entertainment industry. Brendan Fraser, while appearing on The Graham Norton Show, offered his hilarious war stories when working with the monkey on George of the Jungle who he couldn't stand.
Though his roles in George of the Jungle and The Mummy are amazing and formed the foundation of plenty of childhoods in the early noughties, they didn't come without a severe cost. Fraser has said that the pressure on him to look so muscular and toned on the set of the former meant he essentially starved himself - once he was so faint that he couldn't remember his PIN at an ATM machine. And by the time the third The Mummy movie was out, the actor said he was working "put together with tape and ice" due to his repeated injuries, leading to stints in and out of hospitals for over seven years. That being said, he is very keen for The Mummy 4, whatever that might look like, because he wants to star in projects that that he cares about.
Here's Fraser accepting his Critics' Choice Movie Award for Best Actor earlier this month. A word to the wise, keep the tissues nearby:
There's certainly a light-heartedness about the actor's character, in spite of the things that he's had to deal with over the last decade, and his recollection of the events on the set of George of the Jungle with Crystal the capuchin monkey shows it. This was Crystal's first ever role though her career has gone on to span a vast number of movies, and most recently, Steven Spielberg's The Fabelmans. With Michelle Williams on the sofa too, once Fraser realised that this was the same monkey he had met all those years ago, his demeanour changed.
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"It was that b*tch! I knew it was her!" said the actor, adding that Crystal's boyfriend Mr Binx also gave him a lot of grief. "He'd throw a fit and disappear into the rafters if he didn't get the take that he wanted. Mr Binx was a boy monkey, he had to wear a boy bikini and he would get frustrated occasionally and rip it off, disappear into the ceiling and start jacking it." That would terrify anyone, so fair enough to Fraser.
Topics: TV And Film