Brendan Fraser
The decade's most likable leading man: caveman in Encino Man, gentleman in School Ties, jungle king in George of the Jungle, and finally the revolver-twirling hero of The Mummy. Hollywood's nicest action star — and the comeback story the whole internet rooted for.
Brendan Fraser was born December 3, 1968, in Indianapolis to Canadian parents, and holds dual U.S.-Canadian citizenship. His career detonated twice in the same year: 1992 gave him both the caveman comedy Encino Man and the prep-school drama School Ties — the latter alongside young Matt Damon and Ben Affleck — announcing a leading man who could play broad and serious with the same open-faced sincerity.
The range kept widening. George of the Jungle (1997) made him a family-comedy star willing to throw his whole body at a bit; Gods and Monsters (1998) earned him real dramatic acclaim; and The Mummy (1999) plus The Mummy Returns (2001) made him a global action hero — the closest thing his generation had to a new Harrison Ford. Around them he stacked Blast from the Past (1999), Bedazzled (2000), and Looney Tunes: Back in Action (2003), then joined the ensemble of the Oscar-winning Crash (2004) as the peak wound down.
Then came the long quiet stretch. Years of doing his own stunts left him with accumulating injuries and surgeries; personal struggles piled on; and in 2018 he disclosed that the president of the Hollywood Foreign Press Association had assaulted him in 2003 — a revelation that recast his withdrawal from the spotlight. Through it all, the internet never stopped rooting for him.
The "Brenaissance" made the ending sweet: Darren Aronofsky's The Whale (2022) brought him the Academy Award for Best Actor in March 2023, and the standing ovations that followed him through that season felt like a generation saying thanks. The arc — from the 90s' most effortlessly likable star to its most beloved survivor — is the whole story.
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The Mummy
Brendan Fraser with a revolver in each hand, Rachel Weisz waking a 3,000-year-old curse, and a face forming out of a wall of sand. Stephen Sommers turned Universal's 1932 monster into pure swashbuckling summer joy — Indiana Jones for a new generation, and it knew it.
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Adam Sandler
The SNL goofball who became a box-office machine — Billy Madison, Happy Gilmore, The Wedding Singer, The Waterboy. In the '90s his man-child comedies and shouty voices made him one of the most bankable comedians alive.
Jenny McCarthy
The Playmate who snort-laughed at the glamour game. As MTV's Singled Out co-host she buried the pin-up script under googly faces and gross-out physical comedy — and proved a bombshell could be the funniest person in the room.