He was born Brendan James Fraser on the 3rd of December, 1968, in Indianapolis, to Canadian parents. The Fraser's were an old Canadian family, with strong traditions in education and sport. Indeed, his uncle George had won a gold medal at the 1952 Helsinki Olympics. His father, Peter, had been a journalist and now worked for the Canadian Government's office of tourism. Mother Carol was a sales counsellor, and also looked after Brendan and his three older brothers - Kevin, Sean and Regan. Peter's job took the family all over the world, meaning that, by the age of 13, Brendan had lived in Ottawa, Detroit, Cincinnati, London, Rome, Switzerland, Wassenaar in Holland, and Seattle. While in Holland, aged 7, he hung out with the "army brat" kids of military personnel, and took to calling himself a "Brochure Brat".
By 12, he was in London, and this is where he first made contact with acting. Seeing a matinee of Oliver! in the West End, he was immediately taken with the thrill of it all. When his parents then chose to settle in Seattle, young Brendan quickly joined the chorus of a school production of Oklahoma! In the 8th Grade at the Sacred Heart school in Redmond, a suburb of Seattle, he would play Captain Corcoran in HMS Pinafore. He remembers this as a real turning point. Making a grand entrance, he tossed his cape high in the air, only for it to land on his head. The audience, naturally, burst into laughter. What was he to do? Would he give in to embarrassment and walk off, or would he brave it out and continue? Recognising that, despite the laughter, he was having a great time, he went on. And has kept going on ever since.

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At 13, Brendan had been sent to the Upper Canada College in Toronto, a prestigious boarding school. Here, though his academic averages were not good, he would work in the school's little theatre, appearing in plays and revues, and acting as stage manager and ticket seller. Before his final year, though, Peter opted to leave his government office, thus losing Brendan's tuition subsidy and bringing the boy back to Seattle. Here Brendan, having decided that acting was to be his thing, would enrol at the Cornish College of the Arts, his degree emphasising physical performance. One major influence on the boy would be actor, clown and pantomimist Bill Irwin, who'd appeared in Eight Men Out and Robert Altman's Popeye. Sneaking into Irwin's show, The Regard Of Flight, Brendan was hugely impressed by an act that was funny, complex and impossible to categorise. Fraser decided there and then that he, too, would be more than just an actor.

Cornish was a high-class and fairly elitist establishment that taught theatre acting and frowned upon cinema, an attitude that Brendan picked up but did not hold onto for long. Onstage, he starred in The Marriage Of Bette And Boo. By 1991, his list of credits would be impressive. Having graduated in 1990, as a Bachelor of Fine Arts, he took a year-long internship at the Intiman Theatre, and was also a member of the Laughing Horse Summer Theatre. Thus, by his early twenties, he'd already appeared in such classics as Romeo And Juliet, A Midsummer Night's Dream, Three Sisters, Arms And The Man, The King Stag and The Madwoman Of Chaillot. Hard to believe that George Of the Jungle has such a classical background.