He shifted from the leading man into a character actor and carved out a career on TV. You could say the same about Christian Slater but they both transitioned away from leading man into supporting roles and Rob Lowe starred in some god awful straight to video and Tv movies through the 90s after being one of the hottest stars of the 80's.
If you looked at the line up for Outsiders, St. Elmos Fire, and Class (John Cusack,
Andrew McCarthy, Alan Ruck, Virginia Madsen) at the time then had a guess who the biggest stars of the 90's and 2000s would be from the casts.
You would probably guess Rob Lowe, Swayze, Matt Dillon. By the 2000s you were asking "where's Rob Lowe".
Which is my point. Their careers didn't hit the same highs when they transitioned from child/teen/young adult into leading man adult roles and they had to adjust their career paths away from being the hollywood leading man that is capable of putting bums in seats.
Which is my point. Brendan Fraser was and still is acting, he has 4 projects in post-production as of August 2021, and has a career, a pretty good one.
The trajectory just altered from leading man in high profile movies to leading man in lesser budget movies, supporting roles and TV. Brendan had a shot and hit a high, he still had a pretty good career, he just didn't end up being the lead of for every summer blockbuster after the Mummy.
If there was an outside factor it would probably be when he was sexually harassed by a producer and he punched some Harvey Weinstein type dude out. But after that he still carved out a decent career, he just wasn't in the Matrix, Pitch Black, Mission Impossibles, Minority Report etc after The Mummy 1 & 2.
Not every actor can be Tom Cruise or Will Smith. There's only so many spots. Not everybody can be the quarterback.
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