-Do you feel light-headed? Charlie, look at me.
-She was trying to help him.
-Who?
-Ellie.
She was trying to help him.
She just wanted to send him home.
Do you ever get the feeling that...
people are incapable of not caring?
♪♪
People are amazing.
-Welcome back to "Late Night."
We're here with Brendan Fraser, everybody.
[ Cheers and applause ]
That was a clip from "The Whale"
with the aforementioned Hong Chau
doing exactly what you said she's so good at.
When did you... As a young person,
when did you decide that acting was the path for you?
-Pretty early on.
My family traveled a great deal.
My father's work was with Tourism Canada,
and so every three or four years we were somewhere new.
Our family lived in Europe in the '70s.
And so, that was Holland.
And from there, we would take holidays to the UK, London.
It's where I first fell in love
with museums and parks and the theater.
And we would --
My mother would send us off while they went shopping.
And we'd get tickets
to see anything we could get our hands on,
"Jesus Christ Superstar" or, you know, "The Mousetrap"
or whatever funny old mystery that was onstage.
And it opened up like a giant toy box to me,
and I thought, "I want to do that."
I want to be a part of the stories that I read,
and I show them to people,
and it feels like you're included in it
and it's a living story.
And I think that's around the time that I first started --
first sort of got the bite for it then.
-And did your parents celebrate this choice?
Were they excited about the path?
-Yeah, they were. They were very supportive.
My mom actually wrote the check that got me into college
when I got the last absolute final audition
before the Labor Day weekend
to start the new semester,
and I was stone-cold broke.
And they didn't tell me if or not it was accepted.
And I called on the following Monday morning
to ask, you know, "Am I coming in?"
And they were like, "What's your name?"
And I told them, I heard someone like going, "Doo doo doo,"
you know, dropping phones and that kind of thing.
And they went and picked up a card and went...
Or, I heard them with a Rolodex or something.
Like, "Fraser? Brendan?"
I'm like, "Yeah." They were like, "You're in.
Get over here, now, now!" [ Laughter ]
I was like, "Okay!" So, it was off.
-A real professional operation they're running.
-Totally. Yeah.
-They must have put actors in charge
of running the office as well.
[ Laughter ]
Now, you know, this film received
incredible response at the Venice Film Festival.
Standing ovation.
I know, you know, you've had a career
where you've had many highs, but did this feel special?
Did this... Were you standing there
thinking, "Wow, this is an incredible moment"?
-I was thinking I might be out the door real soon if I hurry.
You know? [ Laughter ]
And, 'cause, you know, clapping is hard.
It takes a lot, you know.
-When you -- Yeah.
[ Laughter and applause ]
-You know. Ow! [ Whining ]
-But you read about, you know,
especially at these film festivals,
you sort of read about these
seven, eight, nine-minute ovations.
-I think it depends on who's holding the stopwatch,
to tell you the truth. -Okay. Got you.
So there's maybe a little bit of a heavy finger?
-I think. They're Italian. "It's a-seven a-minutes!"
"It's a 25 minute standing ovation!"
-But I will -- you know, as much as I wouldn't want to stand
and clap for seven minutes, I feel like we sometimes
underestimate how hard it is to stand for seven minutes.
Because at some point,
you can probably only go like, "Thank you, thank you" so much.
-I just broke out crying. That solved all the problems.
-Oh, that's perfect.
Perfect solution. There you go, everybody.
Did you have a moment in your career
where you thought, "Oh, I made it"?
-Um...
Nope! -Okay.
[ Laughter ]
-I don't.
I feel like I'm still waiting for someone to walk in
and tell me that the jig is up, you know.
They haven't found me out yet, but I know
that I'm doing what I love, and it's a privilege.
I'm really happy to be able to do that.
-You, um... [ Cheers and applause ]
I know that obviously we talked about the difficulties
and how arduous it is to go through the amount of hours
in the makeup chair for these prosthetics.
-Yeah. -With that said, I know,
you know, you also have been in films with a lot of stunts --
"Journey," obviously,
and "The Mummy," "George of the Jungle."
Did you -- Was it nice to be in a film where you didn't have to
worry about hurting yourself doing a stunt?
-Oh, just my feelings, that's all.
[ Laughter ] -Well, that's...
Oh, feelings, we got plenty of those.
-I got more. -[ Laughs ]
Hey, it is so nice to see you again.
Thank you so much for being here and congrats on the film.
-Thanks, Seth. -Brendan Fraser, everybody.
"The Whale" is in theaters now.