Charlee Fraser is sitting somewhere in Queensland, cicadas humming loudly enough to puncture the quiet, when she starts talking about time. Not time as a deadline or a schedule or a thing to be outrun – but as something more fluid. Something, as she puts it, that can be “an indicator, rather than a dictator.”
Given she now calls LA home, Fraser is technically on holiday. There is a lagoon in front of her – she mentions it in passing, aware of how idyllic it sounds. She speaks slowly, deliberately, choosing her words with care. It becomes clear, within minutes, that this is not someone interested in racing through life. She has already done that.
A proud Awabakal woman, Fraser was born in Newcastle, on the coast of New South Wales. She grew up climbing trees, riding motorbikes, skating with a single rollerblade, and making potions from flowers, rocks and dirt in the backyard. Her parents were always collecting animals – cats, dogs, goats, sheep, even a peacock at one point – and nature was never a weekend escape, but a constant presence. “We were just always outside,” she says. “With the animals. With the land.”
At 18, she was scouted and thrown into a fashion industry she knew almost nothing about. She joined IMG, rose quickly through the Australian ranks, then experienced a breakout international season at Fall/Winter 2016 that would change everything. Her star-is-born moment came just before Alexander Wang’s New York Fashion Week show, when legendary hairstylist Guido Palau cut her long hair into a sharp bob. American Vogue dubbed her “the new face to know” almost immediately. That season, she walked more than 40 shows – Prada, Balenciaga, Chanel, Dior, Givenchy, Céline – becoming the first Indigenous Australian model to work consistently with the world’s most powerful fashion houses.
For a while, the pace was relentless. The shows. The flights. The expectations. Fraser talks about her early twenties as a time when she was perpetually running – late, breathless, overstimulated. “I always felt like I was running out of time,” she says. “There was never enough of it. I had lists for everything. I was chasing something we’d created.”
Then came a shift. In her late twenties – a period she links instinctively to her Saturn return – Fraser began what she describes as an inner journey. COVID, she says, accelerated everything. “The last five years have been completely transformative. I’m still me – but I know myself now.” That self-knowledge fundamentally changed her relationship with time. “Time doesn’t exist to me in the way we’ve made it,” she says. “My life exists. So where I put my time is where I’m placing my life.”
It’s a philosophy that now informs everything – from the projects she accepts to the rituals that anchor her days. Fraser meditates, journals, moves her body daily. She eats at least one meal a day in complete silence – no phone, no book, no distraction. “Just sitting. Just eating,” she says. “It’s so grounding.”
She journals obsessively. There’s a dream journal. A feelings journal. A daily record of what she’s done and how she felt. She has notebooks dating back to high school, filled with fragments: crushes, anger, half-formed thoughts. “It’s like a scrapbook of my life,” she says. Stillness, for Fraser, is not emptiness. It’s where creativity lives. “When the thinking part of your brain is busy – washing dishes, driving – your subconscious comes through,” she explains. “That’s where the magic is.”
This attentiveness to the inner world has reshaped her work, too. After more than a decade in fashion, Fraser turned her focus toward acting. In 2023, she landed roles in two major films: Warner Bros.’ Furiosa and Sony’s romantic comedy Anyone But You. For Furiosa, she trained relentlessly – combat, riding, physical conditioning, acting – throwing herself into preparation with characteristic intensity. “If I’m in, I’m 110 per cent in,” she says. “I love being challenged. I love learning new skills.”
She doesn’t romanticise the process. “I didn’t pace myself,” she admits. “I just threw myself into it.” But she also recognises that modelling had prepared her for this moment: the vulnerability of being watched, the ability to take direction, the stamina required to move constantly, the discipline of showing up. “I came into acting with lived experience,” she says. “That’s a privilege.”
Her latest project, Stake Out, sees Fraser starring alongside Brenton Thwaites and Danny Huston in a taut, psychological horror-thriller.
As she’s grown older, Fraser has become more selective. There was a deliberate “yes year” in her early twenties – a personal experiment in saying yes to everything. Then came a phase of almost total refusal. Now, she’s found equilibrium. “If it’s not a fuck yes, it’s a no,” she says, plainly. “Your time and your energy are resources.”
That discernment extends beyond work. Fraser describes herself as introverted, though not rigidly so. She can be magnetic and social – but it takes intention. Solitude, she says, is where she resets. “I’m very independent. I’m used to being alone. I love my solo escapes.”
Her relationship with time has recently taken on a new, tangible form. As an ambassador for Omega, Fraser wears a watch daily – something she never imagined she would do. Specifically, an Omega Seamaster Aqua Terra 30mm. “The last time I can remember wearing a watch was around the age of four when my grandparents began teaching me about ‘time’,” she says. “At that age, I felt confused and imprisoned by the concept. Avoidant, uninterested, and unnecessary. Why did I need to know how to ‘tell time’? My adolescence was meant for creativity, adventure, and learning.”
Now, she says, the feeling is entirely different. “With everything that has evolved in the world since – technology and social media specifically – putting on a watch now after all these years feels like freedom. Without having to look at a screen or spot a digital clock, a mere peak at my Omega Seamaster Aqua Terra 30mm to mark the day has returned much more of my youth and presence than I ever deeply considered over wearing a timepiece.”
She pauses, then adds: “I’m far less distracted, more accomplished, and feel a sense of reclamation. There’s more space for mindfulness, imagination, invention and venture. I feel a step closer to nature and connection – not just with the world, but people too.”
It’s a striking inversion: a watch, long associated with pressure and productivity, becoming a tool for presence. “From someone who’s always felt ‘out of time’,” she says, “to someone who now has ‘nothing but time’.”
The future isn’t something she’s trying to outrun. There are films coming. A video game. Creative experiments she can’t yet name. But more than anything, she’s interested in spending time well – with people who value her, in work that feels aligned, in moments that allow her to feel deeply. “Even crying,” she says. “I love crying. It means I care.” Time, after all, is no longer something she’s chasing. “Time is my life,” she says again. “So what I’m excited to spend my life doing is becoming clearer.”
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