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| Real Name: James Eugene Carrey | ||||
| Birthday: January 17, 1962 | ||||
| Place of Birth: Toronto, Ontario, Canada | ||||
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Jim Carrey Biography: Jim Carrey went from a life of poverty in his native Canada to become the highest paid comic actor in the world. Encouraged by his father, Jim began performing comedy routines at stand-up clubs in Toronto at age fifteen. While not exactly winning over the crowds, Carrey returned to the same club two years later with a more professional delivery and caught the eye of booking agents who hired him to open for Rodney Dangerfield in Las Vegas. Again, his young age worked against him and he returned north where he acted in the made-for-Canadian television movie "Rubberface" (1981), playing a struggling stand-up comic.
Carrey made the leap to leading man with the surprise smash hit "Ace Ventura: Pet Detective" (1994) with Courtney Cox. A non-stop showcase for his brand of physical and verbal humor, "Ace Ventura" featured outrageous riffs, including an extended sequence where he talked out of his butt. While most critics dismissed the film, audiences flocked to the theaters and made Jim Carrey a celebrity. "The Mask" (1994) with Cameron Diaz, filmed back-to-back with "Ace", firmly established his box-office power as it grossed over $25 million in its first weekend. Carrey played an everyday guy who finds a magical mask that turns him into an over sexed cartoon superhero. The film also boasted an extended song and dance sequence with Carrey belting out the Desi Arnaz rumba number "Cuban Pete.” Jim Carrey As The Riddler In Batman Carrey followed these successes with another box office hit "Dumb and Dumber" (1994) with Lauren Holly, which, though thin on plot, further showed Jim's flair for low-brow physical comedy. Carrey kept on rolling when he wore an orange wig and skin-tight green jumper to play the Riddler in "Batman Forever" (1995) with Val Kilmer, Nicole Kidman and Drew Barrymore. Not unlike Jack Nicholson's Joker or Michelle's Pfeiffer's Cat Woman, his scoundrel made the film, walking away with the best lines and nods. The sequel, "Ace Ventura: When Nature Calls" (also 1995), opened with a record $45 million box office take its first weekend. The press thought it was better than the first one, but many considered it lazily conceived and Carrey's performance nowhere near as inspired the second time around. Although it featured the memorable sight of him passing through the colon of a hippopotamus.
The darkly comic "The Cable Guy" featuring Jack Black (1996) tanked at the box office, more because of a poor script and Ben Stiller's misguided direction than Carrey, who made the most of the raw material. As a lonely, slightly menacing cable television installer who enters the life of one of his customers (Matthew Broderick), he got to showcase his trademark craziness with touches of compassion, but not everybody appreciated the added elements to his performance. Carrey's core audience of kids did not like the sinister aspects, and word of mouth killed the movie after its initial opening, ending his four-picture run of films that grossed over $100 million domestically. "Liar Liar" (1997) restored his "big money" credentials by earning more than $185 million by the end of the year. In a classic role, Jim managed to put the joke over with his tricks while actually playing a recognizable human being, and his convincing sincerity gave every indication that his wish to be a serious actor was about to come true. Jim Carrey In "The Truman Show" Trying to protect his privacy as a superstar, Carrey has engaged in some sneaky tricks to avoid prying cameras. Extend that scenario to a world of media one-ness, and who better to play Truman Burbank, the star of the most popular program on television, "The Truman Show" (1998), a paranoid television concept which married Norman Rockwell to George Orwell. Having broadened his talent with "Liar, Liar,” Carrey continued his progress away from the scale of his early work eliminating the over-the-top mannerisms in the creation of an insurance man who begins to suspect a conspiracy around him and eventually learns that his whole life has been broadcast as a 24-hour-a-day television show. The combined brilliance of the director and screenwriters provided Carrey an successful change of pace, and the actor's performance earned him accolades.
In a classic example of art imitating life, he suffered neck injuries recreating the scene in which Kaufman injured his neck in the ring with pro wrestler Jerry Lawlor. Lawlor, playing himself, reacted to the actor's spitting in his face with a little ad-libbed pile-driving of his own. Many believed the event was nothing but a publicity stunt, and though Carrey's people insisted it was no stunt, it certainly blurred the line between character and performer. For all the prerelease fan-fair, the film was ultimately little more than a standard biopic, hitting all the milestones but offering little insight into what drove Kaufman. Carrey next returned to early style of comedy, reuniting with the Farrelly brothers for "Me, Myself and Irene" (2000), a far-out romantic comedy that pitted Carrey against himself searching for the love of Renee Zellweger. Although there were some inspired moments of lunacy, the film failed to reach the comic highs of earlier efforts from both Carrey or the Farrelly's. Better yet was Carrey's next film, playing the Christmas curmudgeon in a big-screen, live-action version of "Dr. Seuss' How the Grinch Stole Christmas" (2000) for director Rob Howard. Although the expanded screen story missed the mark occasionally, Carrey carried the ball across the finish line in one of his wildest, and most appropriately hilarious, performances yet. In another apparent bid to gain credibility as a "serious" actor, Carrey signed on to "The Majestic" (2001), a 1950s fable about a troubled, amnesiac Hollywood playwright who becomes mistaken for a small California town's long-lost WWII hometown hero. Continuing his trend of balancing dramatic efforts with screwball comedy, Jim Carrey next became the protagonist of the hit "Bruce Almighty" (2003) starring Morgan Freeman and Jennifer Aniston, a television newsman who unexpectedly receives God's omnipotent abilities when the Lord decides to take a break. Carrey delivered one of his best performances and most rewarding projects, teaming with director Michel Gondry and the notoriously off-kilter screenwriter Charlie Kauffman for "Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind" (2004) with Kirsten Dunst, a delightful romance in which Carrey's Joel Barish undergoes a procedure designed to erase away all memories of his recently heartbreaking relationship with a free spirit (Kate Winslet) only to decide he wants to preserve her in his mind. Although the film was not a smash hit, it was the best attempt to tap both the actor's considerable serious and comedic talents to date. Later that same year he followed up with another outstanding performance, this time in his more familiar high-comic mode, adding incredible talent to the children's classic tale "Lemony Snicket's A Series of Unfortunate Events" with Jude Law (2004) with Carrey as the amusingly evil Count Olaf.
Carrey then starred opposite Tea Leoni in the comedy, “Fun With Dick and Jane” (2005), a remake of the 1976 film starring Jane Fonda and George Segal. In the updated version, Carrey and Leoni played Dick and Jane Harper, a married couple so desperate to retain their suburban home and cars after Dick loses his job that they resort to armed robbery. Meanwhile, Jim was cast against type in Joel Schumacher’s psychological thriller “The Number 23” (2006) where he played a man obsessed with a rare book that he becomes convinced it is based on his own life. Jim Carrey As Horton, in "Horton Hears A Who" In 2008, Carrey starred in the remake of the classic, "Horton Hears A Who" (2008). The story is about an imaginative elephant who hears a cry for help coming from a tiny speck of dust floating through the air. Suspecting there may be life on that speck and despite a surrounding community which thinks he has lost his mind, Horton is determined to help. Next was the comedy "Yes Man" (2008) about a guy who challenges himself to say "yes" to everything for an entire year. Based on the memoir by Danny Wallace. Jim was then hired and cast in the comedy drama "I Love You Phillip Morris" (2009), a true story of Steven Russell (Jim Carrey), a married father whose exploits land him in the Texas criminal justice system. He falls madly in love with his cellmate (Ewan McGregor), who eventually is set free. In the can and awaiting release are the animated comedy "A Christmas Carol" (2009) a animated retelling of Charles Dickens classic novel about a Victorian-era miser taken on a journey of self-redemption, courtesy of several mysterious Christmas apparitions. Next is the action adventure film "Ripley's Believe It or Not!" (2009) that picks up with Ripley at the time he gained celebrity status through a "Believe it or Not" column that chronicled his search for the greatest oddities in the world. Along the way, he starts to respect his unusual human discoveries as more than mere conquests to be documented.
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After appearing
on "The Tonight Show", Carrey caught his first role as a
draft dodger whose death is unwittingly unmasked by a con artist in
Richard Lester's comedy "Finders Keepers" (1984). He did better as a
cartoon artist in the "The Duck Factory" (NBC,
1984), from producer Jay Tarses about life in an animation
studio. Carrey began to alternate between working comedy clubs and
supporting roles in features, notably as a back-up singer buddy to 
Carrey campaigned heavily for the part of Andy Kaufman in "Man on
the Moon" (1999), working with writer Judd Apatow and hiring a
production crew to film an audition tape. Fresh from his success with Weir,
he coveted the opportunity to work with Milos Forman. The biopic offered
the best of both worlds: As the wildly inventive Kaufman, Carrey could give
full power to his genius for impressions and improvisation while at the same
time showcasing the tortured soul of the late comic. 
