Brendan Fraser, 54, described a scary incident that happened on the set of his 1999 film The Mummy, during an interview this week. The actor appeared on The Kelly Clarkson Show and admitted he “nearly” died after a mishap with a rope. “Well, I was choked out accidentally,” he said before going on to describe that it was a hanging scene in which he was accidentally attacked by a stuntman.
“I was standing on my toes like this, with the rope [around my neck], and you only got so far [you can move],” he explained while standing and demonstrating. “And [director] Stephen [Sommers] ran over and he said, ‘Hey, it doesn’t really look like you’re choking — can you sell it?’ And I was like, ‘All right, fine.'”
“So I thought, ‘One more take, man,'” he continued. “And 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 and I was stuck on my toes — I had nowhere to go but down. And so he was pulling up and I was going down. And then 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.”
Brendan added that when he regained consciousness, he heard the stunt coordinator say, “Congratulations, you’re in the club — the same thing happened to Mel Gibson on Braveheart.” He responded with, “Thanks, I think?! I wanna go home!”
Brendan’s admission about nearly dying on the set of The Mummy comes after he celebrated winning a SAG Award for his epic performance in The Whale last week. He gave an emotional speech that encouraged struggling actors while accepting his award. “I will treasure this (award), but never more than what I used to keep in my wallet, which was my SAG card that I earned in 1991,” he said. “It made me feel like I belonged. We’re actors, we all want to belong to a tribe, and that’s when I found where I belonged. And if you told that guy back then that I’d be standing right here right now, I would not have believed you.”
“All the actors out there who have gone through that or who are going through that, I know how you feel,” he added. “But believe me, if you just stay in there and you put one foot in front of the other, you’ll get to where you need to go.”