Brendan Fraser recently revealed how working on his new movie, Rental Family, helped him. The actor, who won the Academy Award for Best Actor in 2022 for The Whale, stars in Rental Family, a comedy-drama feature directed and co-written by Hikari. He portrays Phillip Vandarpleog, an American actor who starts working for a Japanese rental family service while living in Tokyo.
Brendan Fraser says making Rental Family helped him in ‘struggle with insecurity’
The Mummy star candidly spoke about how being involved in Rental Family helped him with his insecurities during a Q&A session at a London screening for the movie.
“I struggle with insecurity, and to make this film, it reminded me that I’m good enough, and I always was all along,” Brendan Fraser explained. “Why am I giving myself such a hard time? It’s there.” (via Variety)
Additionally, the 56-year-old actor praised his co-star, Shannon Gorman, who makes her feature film debut with the film.
According to the official logline for Rental Family, “An American actor struggles to find purpose until he lands an unusual gig: working for a Japanese ‘rental family’ agency, playing stand-in roles for strangers. As he immerses himself in his clients’ worlds, he begins to form genuine bonds that blur the lines between performance and reality.”
Besides Fraser, the cast includes Takehiro Hira as Shinji, Mari Yamamoto as Aiko, Shannon Mahina Gorman as Mia Kawasaki, and Akira Emoto as Kikuo Hasegawa.
Hikari, who penned the script of the movie with Stephen Blahut, revealed during the same Q&A that the inspiration behind the movie came from finding similar job listings during the COVID-19 pandemic.
“My co-writer Stephen Blahut was randomly looking for a job in Tokyo, and he found a job such as rental family,” the filmmaker detailed. “I’m Japanese. I know nothing about the rental family business.”
According to Hikari, the concept was interesting because it allowed them to explore isolation in the modern context. “Pandemic really gave us distance,” she said. “There’s not really much of a connection in between.
Rental Family premiered at this year’s TIFF on September 6, 2025. It will come out in US theaters on November 21, 2025.
Originally reported by Tamal Kundu on ComingSoon.net.
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