Brendan Fraser gives shout-out to Eddie Murphy and Mike Myers as models of the realistic fat suit

Brendan Fraser talked about becoming a 600-pound man for The Whale in a conversation with Adam Sandler as part of Variety Actors on Actors.

The 54-year-old actor, who stars in the Darren Aronofsky film, revealed that the 300-pound “fat suit” he wore for the film was filled with airsoft pellets, dried beans and marbles.

Describing his complex costume, Fraser said a lot of attention was paid to the costume to make sure it obeyed “the laws of physics and gravity.”

“They were shoulder-length sleeves,” she told Sandler. ‘There was a five-point harness that had me strapped down. Once on, I was there all day until it came loose. The costume pieces themselves contained combinations of those little airsoft pellets, maybe dried beans, marbles. But the rule was that the whole look had to obey the laws of physics and gravity, because we don’t see that in movies.’

He then thanked the Farrelly brothers, Eddie Murphy, who starred in The Nutty Professor, and Mike Myers, who played Fat B**tard in the Austin Powers movies, for their considerate use of the fat suit.

‘And I really watched what the Farrelly brothers did. I watched what Mike Myers did, what Eddie Murphy did. That’s just in the last 20 years.

“Anything before that, it’s a cutout silhouette of a costume that’s stuffed with batting, and it’s just an athletic actor inside the suit. And it was all in the service of a bad joke.

Fraser described her determination to portray the role as authentically as possible.

‘It is important to say this, because there are those who live with this disease. I felt empowered to be her voice and be as honest as I could and as authentic as I could in my performance.

‘Look, my weight has been all over the map. I gained weight to play this role, and it wasn’t enough, so the body had to go on top of that, and the two of them worked together.’

Fraser also recalled the consequences of the weight loss he endured for his 1997 film George Of The Jungle, in which he donned little more than a loincloth on screen.

‘You left Airheads and got really into George of the Jungle. He disappointed me how good you looked in it. You weren’t supposed to do that to us,’ Sandler joked to his former Airheads co-star.

‘The wardrobe was that there was no wardrobe. George wears a loincloth,” he recalled of the costume.

You did well in character. But you did us wrong, man. You made us feel bad about ourselves,” the Wedding Singer actor continued.

But Fraser’s diet was not without its consequences, with the actor saying he had trouble remembering his PIN number due to his weight loss regimen.

Hungry for carbs. I would drive home from work and stop for a bite to eat. I needed some cash one day, I went to the ATM and I couldn’t remember my PIN number because my brain was crashing. Hitting the thing I didn’t eat that night,” she said.

The Whale marks Fraser’s first Hollywood project in nearly ten years and his first leading role in a film since the direct-to-DVD thriller Breakout in 2013.

The film sees him play a 600-pound gay man confined to a wheelchair and hoping to reconnect with his estranged daughter.

The film had its premiere at the Venice International Film Festival in September, where Fraser emotionally moved onstage during a standing ovation after the screening.

He subsequently collapsed again during another long standing ovation at the London Film Festival screening last month.

The Whale is scheduled for release on December 9.