In Bedazzled, Brendan Fraser’s roles include a man who cries at sunsets, a Colombian drug lord and a basketball star who’s 7-foot-6. The 2000 fantasy comedy gives him 7 characters to work with as each attempt to become someone else goes wrong.
His starting point is Elliot Richards, a lonely technical-support worker who wants his crush, Alison Gardner (Frances O’Connor), to love him. Elizabeth Hurley’s Devil offers 7 wishes in exchange for his soul, then turns his requests into fantasies with punishing catches.
Hurley described Fraser as “so incredibly quiet and shy,” before “suddenly there’s this enormous performance there.” Harold Ramis directed the film, a remake of the 1967 British comedy written by Peter Cook and Dudley Moore.
One transformation even had a different fate across releases. An October 25, 2000 report said Fraser’s rock-star sequence had been cut from the U.S. version after test screenings, while the British version was set to retain it. Fraser described the character as “a cross between Oasis and the guy from Supergrass.”
Bedazzled opened in U.S. theaters on October 20, 2000.
