Brendan Fraser in tears during five minute standing ovation at London screening of The Whale

Actor Brendan Fraser broke down in tears as he received a five-minute standing ovation at the London screening of his new movie The Whale last night.

The 53-year-old’s emotional display comes amid a lengthy press tour for his new project, which marks his triumphant return to Hollywood after a lengthy battle with depression.

Brendan has said this was sparked after he was ‘sexually assaulted’ by the former president of the Hollywood Foreign Press Association, Philip Berk, in 2003.

In a video shared by a guest at the premiere, an emotional Brendan is seen bowing to rapturous applause from the audience before embracing director Darren Aronofsky and screenwriter Samuel D. Hunter who joined him on stage. 

‘Am I at Venice [Film Festival]? Five min standing ovation for Brendan Fraser’s masterpiece performance in #TheWhale. He had the crowd in the palm of his hand the entire movie. My heart is in my throat,’ the audience member wrote alongside the video. 

Brendan was proudly supported by his glamorous partner Jeanne Moore as he graced the red carpet for the UK premiere on the seventh day of the BFI London Film Festival. 

The Whale, which will be released in cinemas in December, received its first premiere at the Venice Film Festival last month, and is quickly earning rave reviews as well as Oscars buzz for its lead star.

In footage shared on social media following the film’s Venice screening last month, Brendan fought back tears as he received another lengthy standing ovation. 

And the poignancy of the touching moment did not go unnoticed by the actor’s friends and fans alike – with several taking to Twitter to share words of support.

His former The Mummy Returns co-star Dwayne Johnson congratulated him on his return to the Hollywood spotlight, following a years-long break during which Brendan battled depression and myriad health issues.

‘Man this makes me so happy to see this beautiful ovation for Brendan,’ Dwayne wrote. ‘He supported me coming into his Mummy Returns franchise for my first ever role, which kicked off my Hollywood career.

‘Rooting for all your success brother and congrats to my bud Darren Aronofsky.’ 

Fraser shot to stardom when he was cast in children’s favourite film franchises George of the Jungle and The Mummy.

His chiselled physique earnt him a position as a Hollywood heartthrob as he thrashed around the sets performing stunts in high-action roles. But Fraser revealed in a later interview the toll the stunts had taken on his body.

He told GQ in 2018 that when he filmed the third installment in The Mummy franchise, he was being taped up and was icing injuries in between takes.

‘By the time I did the third Mummy picture in China [in 2008], I was put together with tape and ice… because they’re small and light and they can fit under your clothes. I was building an exoskeleton for myself daily,’ he recalled.

Eventually the injuries he received while performing his stunts required multiple surgeries. He needed a lumbar laminectomy, a surgery that removes the back portion of a vertebra in the lower back, to create more room within the spinal canal.

However, it didn’t take and it had to be done again a year later. He had a partial knee replacement, more back surgery involving bolting various compressed spinal pads together and even surgery to repair his vocal cords.

Fraser said he was in and out of hospitals for almost seven years.

Alongside his physical injuries, Brendan also revealed in a 2018 GQ interview that he believed he had been blacklisted from Hollywood after he claimed he had been sexually assaulted by the former president of the Hollywood Foreign Press Association, Philip Berk, in 2003.

Fraser claimed he was leaving a luncheon hosted by the HFPA at the Beverly Hills Hotel in Hollywood when Berk shook his hand.

He said: ‘His left hand reaches around, grabs my a** cheek, and one of his fingers touches me in the taint. And he starts moving it around.’

The actor added: ‘I felt ill. I felt like a little kid. I felt like there was a ball in my throat. I thought I was going to cry.’

Fraser claimed he was able to remove Berk’s hand before running out of the hotel and going straight home. He told his then wife, actress Afton Smith, about the incident but never made it public.

Instead, his reps asked Berk for a written apology, which he provided, but did not admit any wrongdoing.

Speaking to GQ about the claims, Berk acknowledged he had written a letter of apology to Fraser but insisted he had not done anything wrong and dismissed Fraser’s account as ‘a total fabrication’.

After Fraser reported the claim to the HFPA he said he believed he may have been ‘blacklisted’ and was rarely invited back to the Golden Globe awards.

Fraser said the incident had caused him to ‘retreat’ as he spiraled into depression. He described feeling ‘not worthy’ as the decade wore on, leading him to take roles he was less proud of. 

Meanwhile, his marriage was also falling apart. He divorced Afton in 2007 after nine years of marriage and three sons together, Griffin, Leland and Holden. As part of the settlement, he was ordered to pay $50,000 a month in spousal support.

However in 2013 he sought an amendment to the agreement asking to pay less, claiming he wasn’t earning the same enormous cheques he had received in the 1990s during his heyday and couldn’t afford the payments.

The Whale marks Brendan’s first Hollywood project in almost ten years and Brendan’s first lead role in a movie since straight-to-DVD thriller Breakout in 2013, leading many fans to believe this is his comeback. 

The Whale is a psychological drama which saw Brendan undergo a physical transformation, as he plays a 600-pound gay man confined to a wheelchair, a role for which he also had to wear prosthetics.

Its official synopsis reads: ‘A reclusive English teacher suffering from severe obesity attempts to reconnect with his estranged teenage daughter for one last chance at redemption.’

The movie is based on the off-Broadway play of the same name, written by Samuel D. Hunter, who came on board as the screenwriter for the film.

Darren Aronofsky, known for helming films such as The Wrestler (2008), Mother! (2017) and Black Swan (2010), which earned him an Academy Award nomination, first saw the play in 2012 and asked the writer to work on a screenplay.

It took the pair close to a decade to get the project off the ground though, largely due to the unfruitful search for a leading man.

‘I thought about every movie star playing Charlie, and it never made sense or clicked,’ the director told Vanity Fair last month. 

‘If there’s no risk, then why bother?’ Brendan explained of his first conversations with the director. ‘I want to learn from the people I’m working with at this point in my career.’

‘I’ve had such variety, a lot of high highs and low lows, so what I’m keen for, in the second half of my time doing this, is to feel like I’m contributing to the craft and I’m learning from it. This is a prime opportunity. I wanted to disappear into it. My hope was that I would become unrecognizable.’ 

Brendan said in an interview at last month’s Toronto Film Festival that his confidence is up amid the glowing reviews he’s received for his work in The Whale.

‘So often, I have just felt like a working actor who was glad to have a job: “What do you got? I’ll do it,”’ he said, according to the Toronto Star. ‘And that’s a different guy than who I am right now.’

He added: ‘In recent years, when I was a bit more reticent to step forward – have a life with kids and an oldest son with special needs, another kid who’s going to be a senior now and another one who is [learning] to drive and he’s picking up guitar – I think it just gave me a sense of purpose that I don’t know that I would have appreciated as a younger man.’

Director Aronofsky said of Fraser’s presence in the motion picture: ‘It’s the right actor, for the right part, at the right time.’