Sarah Michelle Gellar Honors Longtime Friend Brendan Fraser at Santa Barbara International Film Festival 2023

Brendan Fraser is being honored at the 2023 Santa Barbara International Film Festival.

The 54-year-old Oscar-nominated actor was joined on the red carpet by longtime friend Sarah Michelle Gellar while arriving at the event held on Tuesday night (February 14) at the Arlington Theatre in Santa Barbara, Calif.

Also joining Brendan on the red carpet was his girlfriend Jeanne Moore

During the event, Sarah took to the stage to honor Brendan with the American Riviera Award for his performance in The Whale, which also earned him his first Oscar nomination.

“When I watched his performances, he made me want to be a better actor, then I got to meet him and know him, and he makes me a better person,” Sarah said while honoring Brendan, according to Noozhawk.com.

“Brendan, the person, has the same adventurous heart that you saw in The Mummy, he has the same depth of loyalty as George of the Jungle, the same ridiculous sense of humor as Encino Man,” Sarah continued. “seriously that’s not a joke, that is true — and like Charlie in The Whale, the same desperate longing to do the right thing for the people that he loves.”

In his acceptance speech, Brendan said he played Charlie in The Whale to open minds and to address the way people talk and treat one another.

“To create Charlie, it absolutely required expensive costuming and prosthetic makeup to depict a man whose body was hundreds and hundreds of pounds and do it with dignity and respect and not have the quotation marks around it that we’ve seen in films previously,” Brendan said. “This character hasn’t been created for big screen — as far as any search I’ve done — before in this way, this much respect and attention to detail.”

He continued, “You see that he’s infinitely human, just as human as you and I or anyone else, although his story is one that’s told behind closed doors in a dark apartment somewhere in northern Idaho, and it’s a story that’s all over the country — probably the world too — and one that we don’t often see. It’s a journey of redemption, it’s an attempt at salvation…It’s a film that always had the intentions to change hearts and minds.”

In a recent interview, Brendan revealed the movie role he’s glad he didn’t get.

FYI: Sarah is wearing an Irina Shabayeva dress, Jimmy Choo shoes, with jewelry by Effy Jewelry and Graziela Gems.