These Jim Carrey Facts Will Leave Fans Saying 'Allllrighty Then'

Thanks to his seemingly endless energy and fearless approach to physical comedy, Jim Carrey was on top of the movie world from the mid-'90s to the early aughts, experiencing a meteoric rise to fame after he turned his early small-screen successes into a staggeringly successful series of film releases. Pretty soon, the comedian was a bona fide hitmaker who, in his prime, commanded a whopping $20 million per movie salary and was well worth the cost. His films regularly topped the box office, with very few exceptions. His shtick sold, and sold well.

His ability to carry movies wouldn't last forever, however, and as time progressed, fans learned that there's a whole lot more to Carrey than some goofy faces and the dizzying penchant for slapstick humor that commanded so many crowds. From his humble childhood to his tumultuous relationship history and his newfound passion for political artwork, here's a look at some of the things you might not know about Jim Carrey.

If it seems like Jim Carrey is a natural entertainer, it's probably because he started out young with a very personal audience. As he told "60 Minutes," when he was a child, his mother was unwell, and he desperately wanted to make her happy. "I used to go in there and do impressions of praying mantises, and weird things, and whatever," he recalled. "I'd bounce off the walls and throw myself down the stairs to make her feel better." Carrey wanted to be more than just the family jester, though, and wrote to Carol Burnett when he was 10, asking to be on her show and perform the hundreds of voices he could do. It'd take decades for that dream to come true, but his ambition for the spotlight was already strong.

Unfortunately for Carrey, his family's struggles took a toll on his own well-being. As a pre-teen his father lost his job, so he and his siblings took jobs at a factory cleaning machines to help make ends meet while he was in high school. Eventually, the rigorous schedule took a toll, and he fell behind enough that he decided to quit school. Soon after, his entire family left the factory that had made them all so miserable and chose to live in a van rather than struggle to make rent. "It sounds sad," he told Rolling Stone," but we were so much happier than we'd been being those people we didn't like."

With the support of his father, whom Jim Carrey compared to a "stage mother" for his enthusiasm, he started seeking out work as a standup comedian and found work at a Toronto club called Yuk Yuk. There he was spotted by Rodney Dangerfield, who invited the young talent to open for him. He eventually landed a starring role on NBC's comedy series "The Duck Factory," and his career started to escalate from there with film roles in "Peggy Sue Got Married" and "Earth Girls Are Easy." After an unsuccessful audition for "Saturday Night Live" some years before, Carrey made his big break with a place in the ensemble sketch comedy series "In Living Color."

The series, he later said, proved to be "a gigantic, huge doorway" that would lead his career to the next level. "It was the thing, basically," he noted. "There was a lot of work that went into that, but that was the doorway." Alongside fellow breakthroughs the Wayans Brothers and Jamie Foxx, Carrey's four years on the show helped establish him as a force to be reckoned with, and soon the cinematic offers came rolling in. In 1994 alone, he had three massive hits with "Ace Ventura: Pet Detective," "The Mask," and "Dumb and Dumber." Within a year, he was earning eight-figure paychecks.

Jim Carrey's particular (or should we say peculiar) brand of humor may have entertained the masses for years, but not everyone he's worked with has been a fan of his antics. Tommy Lee Jones, for example, was apparently unimpressed by his "Batman Forever" co-star during their time together. As Carrey would later remember of an off-set encounter, "I said, 'Hey Tommy, how are you doing?' and the blood just drained from his face ... he said, 'I hate you. I really don't like you.' And I said, 'What's the problem?' And pulled up a chair, which probably wasn't smart. And he said, 'I cannot sanction your buffoonery.'" 

It wasn't just his hijinks that had colleagues confused. Things got especially intense when he decided to employ some very serious method acting to become Andy Kaufman for "Man on the Moon" by — in his mind, at least — channeling the spirit of the late comedian. In "Jim & Andy: The Great Beyond," a documentary about the making of the movie, Carrey remembered, "Andy Kaufman showed up, tapped me on the shoulder and said, 'Sit down. I'll be doing my movie. What happened afterwards was out of my control." Indeed, he remained in character throughout production, and Carrey's complete surrender to Kaufman's essence seemed to freak out his co-stars on set.

Like many in Hollywood, Jim Carrey's romantic relationships have tended to hit the skids in rather dramatic fashion over the years. His first marriage to Melissa Womer, with whom he shares daughter Jane, came to a halt after seven years (most of which took place before he hit the big time). Womer would later say that Carrey was an "extremely depressive person" and that she had to "sit up counseling him ... until four or five in the morning on many, many nights."

Soon after their divorce was finalized, he married "Dumb and Dumber" co-star Lauren Holly, but she filed for divorce within the matter of a few months, and she would ultimately credit paparazzi intrusiveness as the cause of their demise. He later dated other actresses, and even got engaged to "Me, Myself and Irene" co-star Renee Zellweger, but it wouldn't last — again thanks in part to the excessive media attention they received. Perhaps the most high-profile of his relationships was with Jenny McCarthy, and, yet again, their flame fizzled out for all the world to see, with his depression cited as a potential cause for their breakup. As difficult as all of those splits must have been for him, though, nothing compared to what would happen after he called it quits with his non-celebrity girlfriend Cathriona White.

In 2015, Jim Carrey's ex-girlfriend Cathriona White took her own life in an apparent drug overdose, and the actor revealed that he was "shocked and deeply saddened" by the loss. Soon after he helped lay her to rest, serving as a pallbearer at her funeral, her family filed suit against Carrey, accusing him of having contributed to her death. He counterclaimed that the wrongful death claims were simply extortion by her loved ones, including her estranged husband. In the process of their dispute, however, the world got to know some very upsetting details about their history, including her allegations that he gave her a sexually transmitted disease and got her hooked on drugs.

In a note, for example, White seemed to echo some of his prior partner's concerns, writing, "You did good things for me but being with you broke me down as a person, Jim. I was promised Jekyll and instead I got Hyde ... You threw me away when you absorbed anything worthwhile that was left of me." White's family's lawsuit was ultimately dismissed in early 2018, but the troubling personal details that were revealed in the proceedings could not be unlearned by the public.

If you or anyone you know is having suicidal thoughts, please call the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline​ at​ 1-800-273-TALK (8255)​.

Jim Carrey's filmography started to become a bit thinner in the 2010s, particularly after the somewhat subdued response to "Mr. Popper's Penguins." He still went on to take supporting roles in "The Incredible Burt Wonderstone" and "Kick-Ass 2," but apart from reprising his fan favorite character Lloyd Christmas in "Dumb and Dumber To," he seemed to abandon his post as a leading man in Hollywood in the years leading up to his return to television with his 2018 Showtime series "Kidding."

For Carrey, the career slowdown was by design. As he told The Hollywood Reporter, "I just didn't want to be in the business anymore. I didn't like what was happening, the corporations taking over and all that." Even when he did decide to give show business another shot with "Kidding," which features him in a somewhat meta role as a children's entertainment star, he didn't approach the new role with the same vigor. "I'm not back in the same way," he told the publication. "I don't feel I'm little Jim trying to hang on to a place in the stratosphere anymore — I don't feel like I'm trying to hold on to anything." One thing Carrey was happy to be known for, though, was his budding career as a political artist.

Jim Carrey has been dabbling in artwork since he was a child, and even claims to have been featured in some exhibitions long before he was famous. However, audiences were still surprised to learn in 2017 that he'd committed the majority of his time in recent years to painting, as he unveiled a full-on exhibit of artwork in Las Vegas. "Your vocation chooses you," he explained of his passion for this new project. "When I really started painting a lot, I had become so obsessed that there was nowhere to move in my home. Paintings were everywhere. They were part of the furniture, I was eating on them ... I think I needed color."

Once the secret of his new endeavor came to light, Carrey began to put his name into the public sphere more and more by creating politically charged pieces that showcased his disdain for Donald Trump's administration; as he told The Hollywood Reporter, "I have to turn the uncomfortable things that I see in this world into art." In addition to using his artwork as an outlet, he's also become a vocal advocate for voter registration and often accompanies the Twitter release of his newest pieces with a reminder for fans to hit the polls.

If it weren't for his cathartic artwork, Jim Carrey fans might have had a reason to start worrying about the actor's well-being after he arrived for a red carpet interview in 2017 and started sharing his very unusual philosophies about existence. "There's no meaning to any of this," he awkwardly told a NYFW interviewer before adding, "I believe we're a field of energy dancing for itself." From there, things continued to go off the rails; at one point, he even declared "there is no me."

It wasn't the last time Carrey would offer his confusing commentary about the state of being. He told audiences at a "Jim & Andy" screening, "There's a character that's been playing me my whole life. In fact, there is no me. I think that's the truth of everybody. We're not an I, or me, or a my. There is energy given to people and a bunch of ideas about their heritage about their nationality, about all those things that are supposed to be anchors to a boat that doesn't exist." The kicker came when, in an appearance on "Jimmy Kimmel Live!," he declared that his persona was nothing more than a "great character" and he was "lucky to get the part." In other words, the Jim Carrey that became such a legend of the comedy movie scene is history, and the actor who portrayed him for so many years isn't eager to step back into that role anytime soon.

Jim Carrey landed a handful of small roles in TV shows and movies in the early '80s before landing would-be breakthrough roles in the low-profile horror comedy "Once Bitten" and the quickly canceled sitcom "The Duck Factory." He'd spend the next few years trying to reach the next level of fame and acting success, and secured tryouts and consideration for major movies that went on to be classics, albeit ones that starred other actors of a similar type.

In addition to an unsuccessful second audition for "Saturday Night Live," Carrey nearly got the role of geeky Farmer Ted in John Hughes' 1984 teen touchstone "Sixteen Candles," losing out to Anthony Michael Hall, according to Vulture. That same year, Tom Hanks beat out Carrey for the leading role of party animal Rick Gassko in "Bachelor Party." Carrey similarly was considered for and nearly cast in the fantasy epic "Legend" (which would ultimately star Tom Cruise) and another Hughes teen movie, "Ferris Bueller's Day Off," with his future "The Cable Guy" co-star Matthew Broderick getting the titular part.

Jim Carrey toiled in Hollywood, achieving varying levels of success throughout the 1980s and 1990s, with his spot in the cast of Fox's buzzy, provocative sketch comedy "In Living Color" leading to successive blockbuster movie hits in 1994 and 1995 with "Ace Ventura: Pet Detective," "The Mask," "Dumb and Dumber," and "Batman Forever." Years earlier, Carrey manifested that success, writing himself a check made out for $10 million for "acting services rendered," dated for the far-off time of Thanksgiving 1995. "Just before Thanksgiving 1995, I found out I was going to make $10 million on 'Dumb and Dumber,'" he said on "The Oprah Winfrey Show." 

He carried the check around in his wallet for years, to the point where it wore out, eventually placing it into the shirt pocket of his coffin-bound father when the elder Carrey died in 1994, according to CheatSheet.

The Ron Howard directed live-action adaptation of "How the Grinch Stole Christmas" is one of the biggest hits of Jim Carrey's career. His work as the holiday thief was the #1 box office draw of 2000, the highest-grossing domestic hit of Carrey's career, and it earned him a Golden Globe nomination. But the performer definitely suffered for his art. The daily process to turn Carrey into a furry, green monster took an arduous eight hours or so, and the result was agonizing. "The makeup was like being buried alive every day," Carrey said on "The Graham Norton Show."

After one day of that, Carrey said he kicked a hole in the wall of his trailer and quit the movie. Howard brought in his producing partner, Brian Grazer, who came up with a way to try to keep Carrey on the film and even-keeled. The answer? Hiring a man who trains CIA operatives who might be captured how to endure prolonged torture. Carrey learned several relaxation and distraction techniques, and he got through "The Grinch" by watching a lot of TV, listening to the Bee Gees, and smoking, although he had to use an extra-long cigarette holder so he didn't accidentally light his Grinch hair aflame.

"Kick-Ass," the 2010 film adaptation of Mark Millar's comic of the same name about teenage superhero crimefighters, featured Nicolas Cage as the token adult cast member. Replacing him as the prominent grown-up in 2013's "Kick-Ass 2": Jim Carrey, a former mob tough who found religion, formed a vigilante group called Justice Forever, and who fought crime under the name Colonel Stars and Stripes. But less than two months before the film's scheduled August 2013 theatrical release, Carrey publicly disavowed "Kick-Ass 2" because of the film's graphic content. "I did Kickass a month b4 Sandy Hook and now in all good conscience I cannot support that level of violence," Carrey tweeted, referring to the December 2012 tragedy in which 20-year-old Adam Lanza opened fire on Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newton, Connecticut, killing 20 children and six school employees (per History). "I am not ashamed of it but recent events have caused a change in my heart," he added.

Millar responded to Carrey's rejection of "Kick-Ass 2" in a blog post (Via The Mary Sue). "Jim is a passionate advocate of gun-control and I respect both his politics and his opinion, but I'm baffled by this sudden announcement as nothing seen in this picture wasn't in the screenplay eighteen months ago," Millar said.

Secondary to Jim Carrey's ambitions as a comedian and dramatic actor, and a pursuit in which he engages from time to time, is music. Carrey will often sing or participate in a musical number in his films, and it's been a moderately successful sideline for the actor. In 2013, he recorded a single (and a Funny or Die-branded music video) for "Cold Dead Hand," a parody of old-fashioned country-and-western songs advocating for better gun control. The single, credited to Lonesome Earl and the Clutterbusters, didn't chart, but the "Cold Head Hand" video racked up nearly two million views.

In 1994, Carrey performed the mambo standard "Cuban Pete," made famous by Desi Arnaz, in-character as the frenetic The Mask in "The Mask." Released as a single and sung by Carrey in a broad impression of Arnaz, it was a decent hit, reaching #31 on the pop chart in the U.K and #88 in Australia. The 1996 Carrey movie "The Cable Guy" featured the actor singing a karaoke version of Jefferson Airplane's "Somebody to Love." More recently, Carrey made a few guest appearances on "Dawn FM," the 2022 album by his friend and fellow Canadian The Weeknd.

Along with his performative pursuits, Jim Carrey is an author, co-penning the 2013 children's book "How Roland Rolls" and the 2020 title "Memoirs and Misinformation." That self-contradictory title is apt, as the book — officially released as a novel — is sort of an autobiography, but also a purposely dissemination of fiction. It's a memoir, laced with misinformation, all in service of telling the not-at-all-true-story of Carrey's life. "None of this is real and all of it is true," Carrey promised of the book he co-wrote with Dana Vachon (whom he met on Twitter), per CBS News.

According to Entertainment Weekly, it took eight years to write "Memoirs and Misinformation. "It's difficult to describe what this book is," Carrey said. "We write about celebrity as a device to talk about the human condition. Yes, it's about an apocalypse. But it's also about the apocalypse of the interior, of the ego." In addition, the book features Gwyneth Paltrow discussing beheading a baby pig at a beachside spiritual retreat, Taylor Swift getting her toe caught in a skull sticking out of a mass grave, and jujitsu battles at Nicolas Cage's house.

In the network-heavy world of the entertainment industry, it's inevitable that sometimes famous people become friends off-screen in unexpected ways. One pair of actors who might seem to have little in common on the surface is Jim Carrey and legendary actor Nicolas Cage. However, the "Face/Off" star has apparently been on-again, off-again comrades with Carrey for quite some time since the early '90s.

The bond between Carrey and Cage goes even deeper than just friendly conversation since, according to GQ, the two intended to collaborate on one of Jim Carrey's biggest projects (via Slashfilm). "Dumb and Dumber" was released in 1994 and starred Carrey at the height of his comedic stardom alongside Jeff Daniels, but that wasn't always going to be the case. According to Cage, he was considered for the role of Harry Dunne but could not participate due to scheduling conflicts. He said, "I know Jim [Carrey] wanted me to be in ['Dumb & Dumber'] with him, but I wanted to do a little movie called 'Leaving Las Vegas' instead." 

Although the friendship between these two actors has seemingly cooled in recent years, Carrey continues to shout out his old friend on Twitter for the release of his memoir, "Memoirs and Misinformation."

Jim Carrey has an impressive filmography featuring blockbuster comedies such as "Dumb and Dumber," "Ace Ventura," and "The Mask." Still, fans may be surprised to remember that this legendary comedian has some unlikely voice-acting experience that's part of the holiday season.

Although he's more known for his live-action performance as the Grinch in Ron Howard's "How the Grinch Stole Christmas," Carrey also played yet another beloved Christmastime character in the 2009 animated Robert Zemeckis film "A Christmas Carol." Carrey played the main role of Ebenezer Scrooge in this fully-CGI production of the classic Charles Dickens novel — as well as voicing the three spirits that visit the character over the course of an evening. 

During an interview with ComingSoon, he discussed the nuances of his performance playing a character so well-known in popular culture. Carrey said, "There are a lot of vocal things, a lot of physical things, I have to do. Not to mention doing the accents properly, the English, Irish accents [...] I want it to fly in the UK. I want it to be good and I want them to go, 'Yeah, that's for real.' We were very true to the book. It's beautiful. It's an incredible film."

When it comes to celebrities saying controversial things that get them in trouble, it seems like almost all of them happen on Twitter. It's getting harder and harder to be fans of someone while having to parse through their bad takes online about a variety of topics. In the case of Jim Carrey, he stirred the pot back in 2015 by expressing some anti-vax opinions for all to see.

According to Time, Jim Carrey posted misinformation about vaccines by making a Twitter post about them that said: "California Gov says yes to poisoning more children with mercury and aluminum in manditory [sic] vaccines. This corporate fascist must be stopped." He later added, "They say mercury in fish is dangerous but forcing all of our children to be injected with mercury in thimerosol [sic] is no risk. Make sense?" 

While this is mostly bordering on pseudoscience, it was also years before any of the COVID-oriented anti-vax discussions came into mainstream popularity — so at least he wasn't just jumping on that bandwagon.

Jim Carrey has always been a bit different from other celebrities of his caliber, whether because of his new-aged spiritual beliefs or because of his openness to express political opinions regardless of online reception. Thanks to his modern reputation for being one of the "weirder" famous people, it should come as no surprise to learn he recently went on record to say he's probably done with the whole acting thing.

During the press junket for "Sonic the Hedgehog 2," which stars Jim Carrey as the main villain Dr. Robotnik, the actor pontificated about his place in the universe and why that may limit his acting career going forward. When asked if he's going to continue appearing on the big screen, he said, "it depends if the angels bring some sort of script that's written in gold ink that says to me that it's going to be really important for people to see, I might continue down the road. But I'm taking a break." 

Carrey then went into detail about how much he enjoys his quieter life of painting away from Hollywood and how he's creatively fulfilled. He said, "I really love my spiritual life and I feel like, and this is something you might never hear another celebrity say as long as time exists, I have enough. I've done enough. I am enough." Only time will tell if that's true when "Sonic the Hedgehog 3" comes around.

Fans of "Doctor Who" may be shocked to learn that one of the Doctors was almost not a native-born Brit and instead was nearly played by Jim Carrey. That's right, the "Ace Ventura" star was apparently one of the leading picks for the role of the Eighth Doctor in the 1996 film, "Doctor Who: The Movie."

In the universe of "Doctor Who," the Doctor is an alien being called a Time Lord that regenerates its humanoid form every time it dies. This is the creative reasoning behind why the Doctor is periodically recast every so often while remaining the same character in the show's lore. Over the years, we've had countless incredible actors do their time as the Doctor including Christopher Eccleston, David Tennant, Matt Smith, Peter Capaldi, and Jodie Whittaker. It's hard to imagine Carrey in the role, but he apparently turned it down due to a general lack of knowledge regarding the franchise (via Far Out).

Since he's primarily known as an improvisational comic throughout his acting career, it may be surprising to learn that Jim Carrey was heavily discouraged from making stuff up on the fly while filming "Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind." Although the Michel Gondry film — which was written by Charlie Kaufman – is mainly known for being a depressingly existential look into the lost memories of a doomed relationship, it also has its fair share of levity throughout.

According to an interview with the Daily Beast, Michel Gondry encouraged the entire cast to improvise when appropriate throughout the filming process — except for Jim Carrey. Gondry said, "What was funny is I had to bring Jim Carrey so far down, to the point where he couldn't improvise or joke too much, but then there are scenes where he's sleeping in the bed and he had to be laying there very still because he's in the frame, and he'd see Mark Ruffalo and Kirsten Dunst be crazy and improvising and going off-script, and he got so frustrated." 

Gondry went on to discuss how he would tell Carrey the film was a drama while encouraging co-star Kate Winslet to play it more like a comedy to differentiate their characters.

It's rare for comedians to admit when someone else makes them laugh, but there's one amazing example of this from the time Jim Carrey and Steve Carell worked together during "Bruce Almighty." This 2003 film came a few years before Carell would make a name for himself as a lead comedic actor in projects like "The 40-Year-Old Virgin" and "The Office," so he was given a minor but notable role as news anchor Evan Baxter in "Bruce Almighty."

Since this movie is about Jim Carrey's character being given the powers of God himself, one of the funniest scenes comes when he abuses those powers against his rival Evan. This scene involves Carrey making Carell say absolute nonsense on live television by puppeting his mouth in a moment of true hilarity. Carrey still looks back fondly on this "Bruce Almighty" scene as a highlight in his career and remembers, "I don't laugh a lot either at my own stuff and stuff like [the newsroom scene], but that scene made me laugh." 

It seems like Carrey wasn't the only person who remembers this moment with Carrell fondly, as the actor got his own spinoff movie in 2007's "Evan Almighty."

While he's dabbled with more serious roles alongside his comedic ones, Jim Carrey has rarely played a straight-up bad guy in any of his movies — until now. With "Sonic the Hedgehog" and "Sonic the Hedgehog 2," Carrey steps into the role of an iconic video game villain with his take on the devious Dr. Robotnik. This character is overtly silly, campy, and over-the-top in his villainous desire to collect the chaos emeralds and destroy Sonic for good, which makes him especially compelling when played with the comedic talents of Jim Carrey.

During an interview with Screen Rant, Carrey went into detail about why it was so much fun for him to tackle a hammy bad guy like Robotnik for two films. He said, "He starts out just as this brilliant guy with a chip on his shoulder and a plan for world domination. But when he gets a hold of that emerald power, which is a thing that people who played the game will be glad to see manifesting, he becomes quantum evil. He's evil 3.0, and now he can bend time and space." 

Carrey also added how enjoyable it was for him to fully embrace the diabolical and egotistical nature of this character by claiming, "It was really a fun thing to do; really a cloud of egoic ecstasy." It just goes to show that sometimes being bad just feels good.