{"id":247533,"date":"2026-01-16T08:23:08","date_gmt":"2026-01-16T08:23:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/247533\/"},"modified":"2026-01-16T08:23:08","modified_gmt":"2026-01-16T08:23:08","slug":"my-great-grandad-escaped-the-famine-he-came-across-the-atlantic-by-himself-aged-11-the-irish-times","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/247533\/","title":{"rendered":"\u2018My great-grandad escaped the Famine. He came across the Atlantic by himself aged 11\u2019 \u2013 The Irish Times"},"content":{"rendered":"

Let\u2019s do the shameless bit first. Nobody called Brendan can visit Ireland without being asked if this counts as the home country. Brendan Fraser<\/a>, born in the great state of Indiana, knows it\u2019s coming. <\/p>\n

\u201cOh, absolutely. My great-grandad Patrick Devine\u2019s family escaped the Great Famine,\u201d he says. \u201cHe came across the Atlantic in a rusty bucket in the 1830s \u2013 he was 11 years old \u2013 by himself. They settled in Pennsylvania. The family later became coal miners. His son became a candy wholesaler. He was a candy man. Ha ha!\u201d<\/p>\n

Fraser, meeting me for tea in the Merrion Hotel in Dublin<\/a>, speaks incredibly quietly, barely above a murmur. He is enormously nice, but one senses a caution about the interview process.<\/p>\n

That is understandable. He has hit a few speed bumps in his career. Early success arrived in the 1990s with the comedy George of the Jungle and the action romp The Mummy. Fraser encountered a fallow period in the early part of this century \u2013 not helped by a still-raw controversy \u2013 before recently regrouping with roles in Steven Soderbergh\u2019s No Sudden Move, Martin Scorsese\u2019s Killers of the Flower Moon<\/a> and, in an Oscar-winning turn, Darren Aronofsky\u2019s The Whale<\/a>.<\/p>\n

His new film has something to say about the insecure life of the (sometime) working thespian. In the touching Rental Family, directed by the Japanese film-maker Hikari, Fraser plays Phillip Vanderploeg, an underemployed American actor in Tokyo who takes an unlikely gig posing as estranged father to a young girl.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe\u2019s not getting the pick of the crop,\u201d Fraser says of Phillip\u2019s lot. \u201cSo many expats who moved to Japan are really kind of gigging it. You know \u2013 the job economy. Living pretty hand to mouth. And he\u2019s a single guy in his middle life.\u201d<\/p>\n

My understanding is that \u201crental families\u201d are a genuine thing in Japan. Actors are hired as stand-in family members for real-life citizens who sense a void in their lives. <\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s all in the title, right?\u201d Fraser says. \u201cI learned this business model has been in practice since the 1980s. There are over 300 agencies in operation now \u2013 probably more when the movie comes out.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt raises a lot of questions. Who works for them? Who are the clients of that? Who are they at home? What do they really care about? Are they living a lie? Are they just getting a pass to bend the rules?\u201d<\/p>\n

Fraser adopts a stage whisper.<\/p>\n

\"RentalRental Family: Brendan Fraser with Shannon Mahina Gorman. Photograph: James Lisle\/Searchlight <\/p>\n

\u201cPhillip is not a very good actor,\u201d he says, laughing. No Oscar redemption is likely for him. But Fraser must still sympathise with the insecurities the fictional expat endures in the slack periods between toothpaste commercials.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou do get a bit of impostor syndrome,\u201d he agrees. \u201cYou have a sense of, \u2018I\u2019ve worked hard for this, but I hope I\u2019m worthy of it and I hope that, going forward, I\u2019ve earned this.\u2019 There\u2019s a standard now that you would think you\u2019d have. But the feeling of \u2018what\u2019s coming down the line next?\u2019 is always a reason to pay attention in this business.\u201d<\/p>\n

Fraser\u2019s family kicked around when he was a kid. His father, a Canadian foreign-service officer, moved the household to California, Switzerland and the Netherlands. Many actors who have had similarly mobile childhoods have told me that the constant shifting proved useful in their later careers: they learned how to adapt, how to pull on different personae.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou\u2019re assimilating again and again and again. You\u2019re the new guy,\u201d Fraser says. \u201cYou\u2019ve got to find a way to pass, to survive, to make your way, to integrate, or to not be noticed, or all of those things. <\/p>\n

\u201cIt meant meeting a diverse cross-section of people before I was 16 or 17. It did give me a great deal of tolerance and exposure to diverse cultures and people. I guess it stands to reason that maybe I would become an actor.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"RentalRental Family: Brendan Fraser on set with director Hikari. Photograph: James Lisle\/Searchlight <\/p>\n

He has dated his interest in acting as a career to seeing a production of Oliver! when he was on holiday in London in the 1970s. He studied the dramatic arts in Seattle (he really did get around) before moving to Hollywood and embarking on the audition circuit. <\/p>\n

Fraser first scored success as a comic performer, his chiselled good looks combining neatly with a gift for ingenuous deadpan. He was a thawed-out caveman in Encino Man, from 1992. He was an idiot variation on Tarzan in the smash George of the Jungle, from 1997. <\/p>\n

But Fraser managed to avoid being too strictly typecast. Just watch his touching performance as the object of Ian McKellen\u2019s affections in the 1998 film Gods and Monsters.<\/p>\n

\u201cI wanted to keep myself and, hopefully, an audience interested in choices I was making,\u201d he says. \u201cI didn\u2019t want them to be too divergent \u2013 180 degrees different from one another \u2013 but I think it helps to branch off into making choices that make me feel like I\u2019m doing something new. <\/p>\n

\u201cI don\u2019t want to say that makes me uncomfortable, but I feel like I\u2019m taking a creative risk. The culmination of all of that is in this movie: going to Japan, learning to speak enough functional Japanese to say my lines properly and sound like an expat speaking functional Japanese.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Mummy and The Mummy Returns, released either side of the millennium, looked to have cemented Fraser\u2019s place as an ironically aware leading man: suave and heroic but also at home to a comic double-take. <\/p>\n

\"TheThe Mummy Returns: Brendan Fraser with his costar Rachel Weisz. Photograph: Keith Hamshere\/Universal <\/p>\n

There were further hits, but the work became sparser as the noughties progressed. Fraser has suggested that the slowdown may have been connected to allegations of sexual assault he made, in 2003, against a former president of the Hollywood Foreign Press Association, the body that created the Golden Globes. <\/p>\n

The facts are still disputed, but, as Sharon Waxman reported<\/a> in the New York Times, Fraser \u201cdemanded and received a written apology from both the association and from a long-time member, Philip Berk, after Mr Berk grabbed Mr Fraser\u2019s buttocks after a ceremony\u201d.<\/p>\n

Speaking to GQ in 2018, Fraser remained troubled by the aftermath. \u201cThe phone does stop ringing in your career, and you start asking yourself why,\u201d he said. \u201cThere\u2019s many reasons, but was this one of them? I think it was.\u201d<\/p>\n

At any rate, he got himself back on the horse. His turn as a morbidly obese man in The Whale won standing ovations on its premiere at Venice International Film Festival, in 2022. The Oscar<\/a> soon followed. Yet Fraser knows not to get complacent. He remembers a conversation with one of the British greats when making Phillip Noyce\u2019s fine The Quiet American, at the start of the century.<\/p>\n

[\u00a0The Whale: It stars Brendan Fraser in an Oscar-nominated performance. But this film\u2019s a shockerOpens in new window<\/a>\u00a0]<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s really no different from when I started off,\u201d he says. \u201cI worked with Michael Caine<\/a> in 2001. He grew up the East End. You know his story. When it was over he said, \u2018Oh, we\u2019re going on social insurance now?\u2019 He felt, \u2018Well, the gig\u2019s up. I guess I\u2019ll go on …\u2019 um …\u201d<\/p>\n

The dole?<\/p>\n

\u201cYeah, and when he said that I did believe him. Because he came from a generation that never lost sight of \u2018what I came from, where I am, what I\u2019ve achieved, and what I hope I can continue to do\u2019.\u201d<\/p>\n

As a fellow middle-aged man with a middle-aged man\u2019s unhealthy interest in the second World War, I express indecent excitement at his imminent appearance as general Dwight D Eisenhower<\/a> (as he then still was) in Anthony Maras\u2019s film Pressure. <\/p>\n

Andrew Scott leads this study of James Stagg, the Scottish meteorologist who had the terrifying responsibility of giving the go-ahead to the D-Day landings. <\/p>\n

\u201cI did my best to let myself be costumed and made up appropriately, and that\u2019s all I could do,\u201d Fraser says with characteristic modesty.<\/p>\n

When he\u2019s not being Ike, he now stretches out in New York.<\/p>\n

\u201cI got out of LA 20 years ago,\u201d he says \u201cI had kids. And we had a son with special needs. At the time there were just no services available to kids with autism. So the place to go was the east coast.\u201d<\/p>\n

Fraser really is a citizen of the world. A man from everywhere. But his parents were Canadian, and during that peripatetic childhood he spent time in Ottawa. I\u2019m guessing some of his heart resides north of the 49th parallel.<\/p>\n

\u201cAnd increasingly more and more, yes, I do. Think about it. Montreal is looking better and better all the time.\u201d<\/p>\n

When I ask if he means that politically, he coyly returns to his character in Rental Family.<\/p>\n

\u201cLet\u2019s just say that Phillip has been out of the country for seven years \u2013 probably for some unexplained reason. But I\u2019ll let you do the math on that.\u201d<\/p>\n

Rental Family is in cinemas from Friday, January 16th <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Let\u2019s do the shameless bit first. Nobody called Brendan can visit Ireland without being asked if this counts…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":247534,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[5932,615,93,631,38549,61,60,8973,2625],"class_list":{"0":"post-247533","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-entertainment","8":"tag-brendan-fraser","9":"tag-dublin","10":"tag-entertainment","11":"tag-for-you","12":"tag-ian-mckellen","13":"tag-ie","14":"tag-ireland","15":"tag-michael-caine","16":"tag-oscars"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/247533","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=247533"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/247533\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/247534"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=247533"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=247533"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=247533"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}