The famous faces of Clan Fraser

We must start our round-up of famous Frasers with this woman, who wrote “Fraser’s Drinking Song”. The song was adopted as the welcome song of the Clan Fraser Society of Canada and was sung to music composed by John Lewis Browne at the society’s annual gatherings. She was the bardess of the society in Canada and was enormously proud of her Fraser heritage, keen to call herself a “black” Fraser due to her dark hair and eyebrows which were said to be the mark of a “true Fraser”.

The American-Canadian actor has mixed roots with ancestors hailing from Ireland, Scotland, Germany, and the Czech Republic. His first major box office success was the 1997 film George of the Jungle, which debuted at number 2 at the box office upon its release. His biggest commercial successes to date were with The Mummy, released in 1999, and its sequel, The Mummy Returns, released two years later. The first film in the franchise grossed $416.4 million worldwide, with the second one grossing $435 million globally.

Scottish actress Laura Fraser was born in Glasgow in 1975. Over the years she’s appeared in several films and TV series. Her first big break was playing Door in the BBC’s dark fantasy series Neverwhere, devised by Neil Gaiman and Lenny Henry. She was in the Hollywood films A Knight’s Tale and Vanilla Sky, both of which were released in 2001, and starred in the final season of Breaking Bad as Lydia Rodarte-Quayle, a business executive managing Walter White’s global meth sales.

Born in 1933 in Melbourne, Australia, Neale Fraser is a former number one amateur male tennis player. He holds the record as the last man to have completed the triple crown, meaning that he won the singles, doubles, and mixed doubles titles at a Grand Slam tennis tournament. He achieved this feat on two consecutive occasions at the US Open, in 1959 and 1960. No player has achieved this at any Grand Slam tournament since. In 1984 he was elected to the International Tennis Hall of Fame and was awarded the Philippe Chatrier Award for outstanding achievements in tennis in 2008. This is the International Tennis Federation’s highest honour. Fraser retired from playing in 1977, and for 24 years thereafter, served as the non-playing captain of Australia’s Davis Cup team.

Born in New York City in 1968, Tomiko Fraser came to modelling far older than many of her peers. She was discovered by a model scout at the age of 25 whilst working in a restaurant and went on to front many campaigns for major brands including Gap, Tommy Hilfiger, and Old Navy. She’s most recognised, however, for her work with Maybelline, as she was the first African-American model to act as the face of the makeup brand.

Known as “groovy Bob”, Robert Fraser was a renowned art dealer who played a key role in London’s cultural scene of the mid-to-late 1960s. He established the Robert Fraser Gallery near Grosvenor Square in 1962 and the gallery helped to launch the career of many prominent British and American artists including Eduardo Paolozzi, Andy Warhol, Gilbert & George, Bridget Riley, and Peter Blake. Fraser was a trendsetter during the swinging Sixties, with Paul McCartney describing him as “one of the most influential people of the London Sixties scene”. He died from AIDS in 1986, and in 2015, Pace London presented an exhibition based on his life named A Strong Sweet Smell of Incense, A Portrait of Robert Fraser.

Born in 1993 in Igloolik, an Inuit hamlet in Nunavut, northern Canada, Kelly Fraser was an Inuk singer. She sought to keep the Inuktitut language alive through covers of English-language pop songs and received widespread attention for her cover of Rihanna’s “Diamonds”. She released Isuma, her debut album in 2014, and her second album Sednain 2017. Both albums focused on raising awareness of Inuit rights and the impact of colonisation. Her second album was nominated for Indigenous Music Album of the Year at the 2018 Juno Awards, which celebrate the musical achievements of Canadian artists. At the time of her death by suicide in 2019, she was working on a third album, to be called Decolonize.

Steve Fraser was born in 1958 in Michigan and is an Olympic gold medallist wrestler. He was a high school state wrestling champion and an All-American in wrestling whilst at the University of Michigan (meaning that he placed within the top 8 in the country in his weight class). He took the Olympic gold medal at the 1984 games in Los Angeles for Greco-Roman wrestling in the 198lb weight class. His win that year contributed to the USA’s largest gold medal haul for wrestling at an Olympic Games since 1896, with a total of 9 gold medals. Since 1977, Fraser has coached the US Greco-Roman wrestling team.

Kathleen Fraser was an American poet who penned over a dozen books of both poetry and prose. She founded the journal HOW(ever) which focused on innovative writing by women and worked as a professor of creative writing at San Francisco State University from 1972 to 1992. There, she founded the American Poetry Archives and served as director of the university’s Poetry Centre.

Six-time Olympic medallist Shelly-Ann Fraser-Pryce is widely thought of as one of the greatest sprinters of all time and her achievements have helped Jamaica to achieve worldwide acclaim in track and field sports. She competes in the 60-metre, 100-metre, and 200-metre sprints, and has won two Olympic gold medals for the 100m, and an Olympic silver medal for the 200m. At the 2008 Beijing Olympics, she became the first Caribbean woman to take the gold medal in the 100m, and at the 2012 London Olympics, she became one of just three women in history to defend an Olympic 100m title. She won the bronze medal in the event at the 2016 Rio Olympics, making her the first female sprinter to win medals in the 100m event at three consecutive Olympic Games. Fraser-Pryce holds 11 World Athletics Championship medals, and her win in 2019 at the age of 32 made her the oldest female sprinter to claim a global 100m title.