Brendan Fraser (Rental Family) Rental Family
Brendan Fraser plays Phillip Vanderploeg, a washed-up American actor living in Tokyo who joins a rental family agency. Rental Family was Fraser's first role after winning the Academy Award for Best Actor for The Whale (2022), and he chose it deliberately -- turning down dozens of other scripts -- because the material resonated with his own experience of loneliness in the public eye. (variety, goldderby)
He chose this as his post-Oscar role because loneliness was not abstract to him
Fraser received roughly seventy scripts after his Oscar win and was deliberate about what came next. He described his attraction to the role as a recognition of something familiar:
"It was so far removed from anything I had seen. The story is an unusual way to fulfill the needs of people who are bereft of family." -- Brendan Fraser, Variety (2025)
"I wanted it to be something sort of a quarterback sneak, something out of the ordinary." -- Brendan Fraser, Gold Derby (2025)
The film's central emotion -- isolation -- was not something Fraser needed to manufacture. His own career trajectory, from blockbuster stardom through a decade of near-invisibility before The Whale, gave him direct access to Phillip's situation:
"At times in life, we've all felt like we want to be part of something and have our noses pressed against the glass, trying to get in." -- Brendan Fraser, Variety (2025)
"It felt like a film without a villain per se -- apart from apathy. That speaks to us at this time." -- Brendan Fraser, Variety (2025)
His physical presence became the performance's primary instrument
Fraser's bulk -- the same physical quality that made The Whale so striking -- serves a different purpose here. In the scenes with Mia, his size becomes protective rather than imposing. In the scenes with Kikuo, his body language shifts from actor-playing-a-role to someone genuinely present. Multiple reviewers noted that Fraser communicates more through physicality than dialogue -- the way he sits next to a child, the way he leans toward an old man, the way he fills a doorframe.
Will Hume at Flickering Myth called it Fraser's finest work outside the Mummy franchise. Brian Eggert at Deep Focus Review was less convinced, finding the performance "grand and caricature-like" compared to his more restrained Japanese costars, creating "an unintended sense of othering." (flickeringmyth, deepfocusreview)
"The quiet warmth of Fraser's performance and delicacy of direction just about distract from sentimentality." -- Donald Clarke, Irish Times (2026)
He learned Japanese on set with a dialect coach
Fraser worked with a dialect coach throughout the two-and-a-half-month shoot for his Japanese-language scenes. His approach was immersive rather than scholarly:
"I'm an excellent mimic. By the end, I could comprehend conversations at least. And I realized that language becomes immaterial when you have a need to communicate." -- Brendan Fraser, Variety (2025)
"It was location; it wasn't vacation. By the time I left, I felt like the Victrola dog." -- Brendan Fraser, Gold Derby (2025)
He described the shrine ending as Phillip finally seeing himself
Fraser interpreted the film's climactic shrine mirror scene as the moment Phillip's self-doubt resolves:
"I am in there. I was enough all along. I didn't need to doubt myself. I'm gonna be okay going forward." -- Brendan Fraser, FandomWire (2025)
His broader summary of the film's argument -- that family is a construction, not a birthright -- aligned with Hikari (Rental Family)'s own stated intentions:
"Family is who we make it to be, who we find it to be... It's a love letter to loneliness." -- Brendan Fraser, Gold Derby (2025)