Brendan Fraser claimed on a recent episode of The Kelly Clarkson Show that he had a near-death experience while filming The Mummy. The Oscar candidate claimed he was “choked out accidentally” during a scene in which he had to be hanged with a rope.
Fraser said the moment happened after director Stephen Sommers said: “Hey, it doesn’t really look like you’re choking – can you sell it?”
“You only got so far to go,” Fraser said, adding that he was standing on his toes.
The production team filmed one more take. Fraser said, “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 and I had nowhere to go but down. 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 and there was gravel in my teeth.”
Fraser said he needed to be resuscitated and, when he gained consciousness, he was told by the stunt co-ordinator working on the film: “Congratulations, you’re in the club – same thing happened to Mel Gibson on Braveheart.”
Fraser replied: “Thanks, I think? I wanna go home!”
The Mummy has remained one of Fraser’s most popular films. In January, the actor made news when he crashed a sold-out theatrical screening of The Mummy in London.
“I am proud to stand before you tonight,” Fraser told the audience. “This is a film that was made in Britain. You should know that! Even the second one, too. Be proud. Thank you for being here. We had no idea what kind of movie we were making when we shot this. We didn’t know if it was a drama or a comedy or an action or a horror picture or a romance… all the above. We had no idea until it tested in front of British audiences. Thank you for that.”
Fraser recently won the Screen Actors Guild Award for best actor thanks to his performance in “The Whale,” which also garnered him his first Academy Award nomination.
