Brendan Fraser has something of a split-screen personality this summer. First, he connected with his inner geek to play socially awkward science professor Trevor Anderson in Journey to the Center of the Earth, opening Friday. It's the first live-action movie shot entirely in digital 3-D, and talking about it sends Fraser into paroxysms of excitement.

The technology, says Fraser, 39, "was eye-opening, literally. It didn't remind of the days when I was a kid, when we put red-eye, blue-eye glasses on and watched kung fu movies. I wanted (the action) to come at me more, so I thought if I looked through one eye — but then everything's red. Or everything's blue. It didn't work."

On Aug. 1, Fraser hurtles into the theaters as Rick O'Connell in The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor. Fraser, the father of sons Griffin, 5, Holden, 3, and Leland, 2, talks mummies, showgirls and sushi as two of his summer movies open nearly back to back.

Q: Given that you shot Journey to the Center of the Earth mostly in front of a green screen, I assume you really had to believe in what you're doing?
A: Absolutely, and funny enough, that's what actors should be doing. But for some reason or another, I've been told that I have this unusual ability to believe that there are objects and things in a room that really are not there. That's what I'm good at, and I've had lots of on-the-job training over the last 10-15 years. All you have to do is just believe.

Q: Can you imagine Showgirls in 3-D?
A: Absolutely. I'll be there. Forget all the Star Wars!

Q: Are you anywhere near as geeky as Trevor?
A: Uh, no.

Q: I know you're an avid photographer. What's your favorite subject?
A: Now, children. Selfishly, mine. It used to be, before I had kids, I think about all the film I burned — oh, my God, it's so cool, look at that fire escape. Having kids — it's just a wall, dude. I'm going on an image-catching expedition.

Q: Have they seen Journey yet?
A: No. I don't know if they're ready for it.

Q: You must be the coolest dad, between Journey and the upcoming third Mummy movie.
A: No. No! The day of reckoning will come when my almost-4-year-old will be angry with me the first time he realizes that I didn't ever introduce him to SpongeBob. What I do — they don't understand. I'm happier to keep it that way for now. Being a good dad means being a good dad. You're a presence in their lives.

Q: So tell me about the thirdMummy.
A: I waited seven years to get the call. I missed playing Rick O'Connell a lot. We took the same characters and put them into another archaeologically rich nation, China. Jet Li is the new heavy. There's almost two films and two stories being told. You want to be one of those characters.

Q: And, of course, I have to ask you about G.I. Joe.
A: That's a cameo, a full-on cameo. That was me begging Bob Ducsay, who produced the first two Mummys, and we were in Shanghai one night. Bob had a big grin on his face and told me Paramount gave him the green light for G.I. Joe. "Can I be in your movie, please? I'll do anything! I'll play a crazy drill sergeant." And I can't believe it — they called me! I am Rick O'Connell's great-great-grandson. He gets to decide who does or doesn't get to be the Joes. And that's it. I had a Joe. My Joe was twisting in the wind, hanging from his parachute.

Brendan Fraser is the king of mashing up monsters on the silver screen, from his highly successful "Mummy" and "Mummy Returns" to his new flick, "Journey To The Center Of The Earth."

The 39-year-old actor said the movie uses a new version of 3-D technology to thrill audiences.

"(It's) like you've never seen before," he told Early Show co-anchor Harry Smith. "3-D used to just come at you like a gimmick. This utilizes all the best visual effects that we have. It uses a system called RealD, it's all digital."

RealD technology has been used in animated films like "Chicken Little" and a version of "Meet The Robinsons" as well as recent concert films by Miley Cyrus and The Rolling Stones. "Journey To The Center Of The Earth" is the first live action film to use the technology.

The film also marks the feature film directorial debut by Eric Brevig who's best known for his more than 20 years of experience as a visual effects supervisor ("Men In Black," "The Day After Tomorrow").

"We've taken the classic tale, Jules Verne's 'Journey To The Center Of The Earth' to be the template for this adventure picture," Fraser said. "We've put it together with state-of-the-art imagery to bring an audience to a place where they are immersed into this movie. It's like they become a character from the start."

Fraser is used to filming scenes in front of a blue screen where he'll tangle with unseen foes to be filled in later by the visual effects team.

Apparently, he honed his technique in grade school.

"You need a verdant imagination and a lot of patience. I used to sit in the hallway and play with my imaginary friends as a school boy. It's paid off, let's just say," he quipped.

Fraser admitted that he had never read Verne's 1864 book. But after he received the screenplay, he immediately ran out and got a copy.

"I compared the screenplay and the book," he said. "I thought 'I think we can build on these character relationships a little bit better.' I pitched some ideas and the studio said 'nice job' and made me an executive producer."

This was Fraser's first job as an executive producer. He said he was "terrified" and had no idea what to do, but he feels that over the last 15 years he's come of age and was able to rise to the task.

"I have learned my trade, my craft, working with things that are out there," he said. "I love this movie. I love to go and watch the audience watch the film. I defy anyone to not have a good time. They're constantly reaching out, they're ducking, leaping over backwards."

His vulnerability, machismo and smarts are big draws at the box office.

Brendan Fraser is big man in Hollywood.

The 6-foot-3 actor has a firm handshake and a marquee smile, but when he talks, he's so soft-spoken -- and aware of that fact -- that he's constantly leaning in and stooping over during conversations. But he's aware of the lean as well; he acknowledges that he routinely makes himself smaller to fit in.

"I've always had a bit of a complex about being over 6-2," he confesses. "I've developed bad posture; I always try to become diminutive and stoop so as not to feel I'm dominating."

This from a bona-fide action star with well more than a billion dollars in worldwide box-office grosses and two high-profile movies out in less than a month -- "Journey to the Center of the Earth," which opened Friday (including 3-D showings in some venues), and "The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor" in theaters Aug. 1.

It's that larger-than-life image that Fraser says follows him around the globe. People in seemingly every country he visits ask him when the next "Mummy" film -- in which he plays intrepid adventurer Rick O'Connell -- is coming out. They rarely ask him about working with Ian McKellen on the critically acclaimed indie movie "Gods and Monsters" or Graham Greene's prescience in writing "The Quiet American."

"I suppose everyone wants to enjoy themselves," says Fraser over a bowl of corn chowder at a Santa Monica restaurant. The actor is clearly proudest of those smaller films he's appeared in, including 2005 best picture winner "Crash," but is cheerfully unapologetic about his higher-grossing, less-cerebral work in the likes of "George of the Jungle."

"Larger-budget fare...heck, I go to the movies to have a good time," he says. "I want to be taken somewhere else. I want to be shown something new. I want to have the opportunity to laugh out loud. Put whatever's on your mind aside for a while. And I'm grateful every time I have a chance to make a film."

He's not kidding. Fraser still feels the bruises from stumbles like 2001's "Monkeybone." He's also honest about a period of time after the second "Mummy" movie in which he says he "couldn't get arrested."

"Then, when you least expect it and stop working so hard, stop caring how you're perceived by others in the industry, you start enjoying yourself again and the job gets a lot easier," he says.

In his popcorn movies, Fraser exudes a masculine and earnest accessibility, a throwback charm that hearkens to an earlier Hollywood era and brings to mind names like Flynn and Gable. So while he's discovering a hidden world in the Earth's core or brawling with the undead, fans cheer rather than cringe. "Journey" director Eric Brevig says, "I needed a guy who could go from being a sad sack to the Man of Steel in 90 minutes and make you love him the whole time, and Brendan does it better than anyone else."

Trying to fit in

As the 39-year-old father of three boys talks about personality traits that aided his success, a pattern emerges. He says his family moved around a lot (Indianapolis, Toronto, Seattle), often leaving him scrambling to belong, needing friends and sometimes resorting to imaginary ones. And it's a motif reflected in many of his early roles. He describes " Encino Man" as the story of a caveman who has been in a time capsule and is trying to fit in, a theme repeated (sans Neanderthal) by the struggling outsiders in "School Ties" ("The movie is about belonging and not belonging," he says) and "Blast From the Past" (in which he plays another man out of time trying to find his place in a strange world).

Brevig, an Oscar recipient for his special-effects work on "Total Recall," said by phone that Fraser's surprising vulnerability and self-knowledge are strengths: "He is aware of what audiences want to see of him. He understands his image and that his fans have preferences. He tries to give them what they like. He knew this wasn't a maudlin film, an art movie."

But Brevig got more than a leading man for "Journey" with Fraser:

"I was surprised that he was so smart that he was aware of how to fix some of the shortcomings of the script," he said, crediting the actor with the key suggestion to switch the main characters' relationship from a father and son in the screenplay back to the uncle-nephew identities they had in the Jules Verne novel, among other ideas. "I had been meeting with development executives for months and no one said this."

"So they made me an exec," says Fraser, proud of earning the executive-producer stripe, "which I asked for, because I wanted to have a voice at the table. Because on 'School Ties' [1992], one of the producers referred to actors as 'talking props.' That told me a lot."

Fraser says that although "Journey" is an action-fantasy movie shot in 3-D, budget restrictions forced Brevig to return to "student filmmaking techniques."

"They wouldn't build us a waterfall to slide down" for an important stunt, Fraser says. "So Eric said, 'We're gonna build a runway, cover it with a slick surface, and get fire hoses from the fire department.' Then there was like a pickup truck [pulling us along]."

He laughs, then adds, "We were all asking for extra takes because it was so much fun."

True to his ability to straddle the line between indie and more commercial fare, he then offers this take on the characters' actual plunge to Earth's core: "They fall down this volcanic tube, almost like Lewis Carroll, backward through the rabbit hole, splash! A quasi-baptism takes place and they're reborn. They become better versions of themselves."

Fraser says Brevig wooed him with cutting-edge 3-D footage at James Cameron's Lightstorm facility.

The actual filming necessitated a great deal of playing to nonexistent monsters and environments, which Brevig said was one reason he wanted to hire the actor.

Noting that Fraser had fended off cartoon characters added in postproduction, Brevig says, "I knew he was he brilliant at being able to pantomime fighting against creatures that weren't there."

When asked if he ever felt silly pretending to be menaced by imaginary dinosaurs, Fraser laughs and says, "Never. That's my job, my friend. If you want respect, go be a doctor."

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