Brendan Fraser

Six Oscar contenders -- Austin Butler, Paul Dano, Brendan Fraser, Jonathan Majors, Bill Nighy and Adam Sandler -- talk about family, playing real people ...

[laughter] And I wrote Adam’s name in the front page of the script because that was my kind of touchstone. I was spiraling, like, “It’s over, I don’t know what I’m doing.” He was like, “No, no, no, look, you peaked, you peaked, it happens to actors.” He started naming people that he worked with. In order to play jazz, you gotta know your scales inside and out, you have to know that instrument inside and out — and that’s how he is with preparation. Fraser: The climax of “The Whale” is when he finally comes forward and he tells his daughter, “I’m sorry.” It was near the end of it, I was feeling, like, all pedal and no gas at that point. I’ve told this story before, but in case you guys haven’t heard this [laughs], when I heard that [Luhrmann] was making the film, I started obsessing and I was watching all the documentaries and I learned that Elvis’ mom died when he was 23. Like I could get to that place with my daughter and have the patience to go, “OK, what do you want to do?” Where you [stop resisting your son’s desire to work in movies and] go, “All right, son.” You know? Brown in “Devotion”], but your ultimate judge is the family who’s involved in the film — how do you meet that responsibility? I don’t know that every film has done that for me, but when you make contact with something that is able to give back to you, that’s really nice. Brendan Fraser: I think it made me appreciate the good things that I have going on in my life. how many more pairs of shoes are you gonna ...” I don’t think doing the part made me think any — you can’t think more about death than I already do. “In the movie, my name is Stanley; my dad’s name was Stanley, we kind of did that for my pop. I said, “Well, I don’t know — 35 times a day?” [laughter] You know, you buy a new pair of shoes, you think, “Maybe ...