and creativity. You couldn’t categorize what he did or who he was.”    Although Fraser was awarded a scholarship to attend graduate school as Southern Methodist University, he never made it there. Instead he used his mother’s car to drive down the coast and seek his fortune in Hollywood. He didn’t have long to wait. Beginning with a single line in a film that never made it to theaters and a small role in two made-for-TV movies, Fraser’s career quickly took off. Within a year he was starring in two feature films of vastly different styles. In the first of these movies, School Ties, he was part of an ensemble cast, which included up-and-comers Matt Damon, Ben Affleck, and Chris O’Donnell. The critically praised drama about anti-Semitism at a private prep school allowed Fraser to call upon his own horrific hazing experiences at a boarding school, which included being dragged from his bed at age 13, and thrown in the trunk of a car.

Acting alongside the likes of future stars Damon and Affleck was a heady experience for the young actor, and Fraser recalls how impressed he was by their abilities even then. “I thought, ‘I’m never going to be able to do that,’” he said last year. “It was movie acting, and I came from the theater. All I knew came from a book by Michael Caine about tuning it down for the movies.” But Fraser more than held his own. Not long after School Ties came Encino Man, a mindless but enjoyable film in which Fraser plays a frozen caveman who is unearthed by two teenagers, one of whom is the goofy Pauly Shore. Although in hindsight Encino Man might not have been the most obvious career choice for the theater trained Fraser, it demonstrated that he had range.        “I was 23 and had just finished School Ties, and I was fighting against doing Encino Man,” he recalls. “But I was happy to be working at the time and to be honest, I was thinking more about paying the rent.

I also realized that the careers I admire are built on diversity. Starting off you need to have a calling card that will say ‘I can do this and I can do that’ - extremes from the sublime to the ridiculous. hat attitude came in handy for George of the Jungle, the 1997 live action version of the 1960s Jay Ward cartoon. Although intended primarily for younger viewers, the writing, as well as Fraser’s portrayal of the Tarzan-like character, was done so adults also found the movie entertaining. The success of George helped spur the development of a number of live action adaptations of cartoons. And it certainly didn’t hurt the popularity of Disney’s animated Tarzan movie. Jokes the actor, “Frankly, I think Disney stole my look for their animation.”        Fraser followed George with another adaptation of a Jay Ward cartoon - about the Canadian mountie Dudley Do-Right. This time, his choice was largely personal - his great-grandfather had been a