JIM CARREY

The final part of our regular series, paying tribute to the mega-watt stars who still roam Hollywood

WORDS SIMON CROOK

The rubber-faced comedy king who demands your attention

ACCORDING TO HIS autobiography Memoirs And Misinformation, during the mid-2010s Jim Carrey found himself at a career crossroads. Should he go for that elusive Oscar and take the lead in Charlie Kaufman’s Chairman Mao biopic? Or star in Kenneth Lonergan’s Hungry Hungry Hippos enormo-buster, alongside the ghost of Rodney Dangerfield? Neither, alas, were to be. The apocalypse struck and Carrey was forced to battle an invasion of alien lizard-men alongside Kelsey Grammer, Nicolas Cage and, er, Gwyneth Paltrow.

Didn’t happen. Of course it didn’t. Set in a mega-bollocks parallel Hollywood, 2020’s Memoirs And Misinformation is a classic Carrey contradiction: a fictional autobiography that, nonetheless, exposes some home truths about the artifice of celebrity culture. It sounds wilfully perverse, snickering behind a persona when handed the chance to tell his life story, but it’s a game Carrey’s played all his career: wearing a mask to tell his own truth.

Let’s get the obvious stuff out of the way. With his pretzel body and putty face, Carrey is a supremely physical comedy force. Such is the ferocity with which he throws himself into his roles, he broke three ribs shooting a slapstick skit for Yes Man, wrenched his ankle hurling himself over a fence in Me, Myself & Irene, and cranked his neck wrestling Jerry Lawler for Man On The Moon.

What’s less evident are the mental contortions he puts himself through. From the elastic spasms of Ace Ventura to the muted heartbreak of Eternal Sunshine Of The Spotless Mind, Carrey has revealed more sides than a dodecahedron in a spin drier. Calling him a chameleon, though, would be a mistake. Dig deeper, and Carrey is more like a cannibal dining on himself, gnashing off chunks of his own identity in sacrifice to character. “Every project is me recreating myself,” Carrey confessed to The New York Times in 2020. “Tearing down the old self and exploring something new.”

ILLUSTRATION CHRISTOPHER LEE LYONS

THE BOX OFFICE

Jim Carrey’s top five money-makers

BRUCE ALMIGHTY

$485m

SONIC THE HEDGEHOG 2

$402m

THE MASK

$352m

HOW THE GRINCH STOLE CHRISTMAS

$345m

BATMAN FOREVER

$337m

* Global box office, according to BoxOfficeMojo.com

Carrey as Ace Ventura, doing his bit for mental-health awareness;

As the alien Wiploc, alongside Damon Wayans and Jeff Goldblum, in Julien Temple's Earth Girls Are Easy;

If you’re looking for the man behind the masks, you’ll get little out of Memoirs And Misinformation. But the life story of this unique, contradictory talent — the clown aching to be taken seriously, the depressive who made the world laugh, the star who chased fame then ran away — is actually already there, in the films.

Infamously, while he was shooting Batman Forever, co-star Tommy Lee Jones was so exasperated by Carrey’s scene-stealing, an encounter in an LA restaurant led Jones to bark: “I CANNOT SANCTION YOUR BUFFOONERY.” If Tommy is reading this right now, he better turn to the reviews or something. We are about to sanction some serious buffoonery.