Brendan Fraser to skip Golden Globes after accusing former HFPA head of sexual assault

Brendan Fraser
| Photo Credit: Arthur Mola

Oscar-tipped actor Brendan Fraser has said in an interview that he will not attend next year’s Golden Globes ceremony, four years after he publicly accused Philip Berk, the former head of the Hollywood Foreign Press Association, of sexual assault.

In a startling comeback, the 1990s star has raked in plaudits for his role in Darren Aronofsky’s The Whale. But even if his performance does score him a Globes nod, he will not attend the January event.

“No, I will not participate,” Fraser told GQ in an interview when asked if he would attend the awards, organized by the Hollywood Foreign Press Association (HFPA), were he invited.

“It’s because of the history that I have with them. And my mother didn’t raise a hypocrite,” he added.

In 2018, the actor accused former HFPA president Philip Berk of groping him at an event in 2003. Berk denied the allegation, but acknowledged making a written apology at the time.

The HFPA, after an investigation sparked by Fraser’s allegation, concluded that Berk’s touching was “intended to be taken as a joke and not as a sexual advance.”

One of the biggest names in Hollywood in the 1990s, Fraser starred in a string of family-friendly blockbusters as a muscle-bound hunk in films such as George of the Jungle and The Mummy, before his cinema career fell off in the late 2000s.