13 Behind-The-Scenes Stories About Jim Carrey Movies
Carrey's Unprecedented $20 Million Paycheck For 'The Cable Guy' Created A Massive Financial Ripple Effect In The Movie Industry
Photo: Columbia PicturesIn 1994, Jim Carrey erupted onto the Hollywood movie scene with three hit movies. The rubber-faced comedian had just experienced one of the most successful years in funny movie history with Ace Venture: Pet Detective, The Mask, and Dumb and Dumber. Carrey further cemented his A-list box-office status in 1995 with Batman Forever and the sequel Ace Ventura: When Nature Calls.
The allure of the Hollywood comedy is that they're generally safe bets because they don't cost a ton of money to produce, as opposed to action movies that carry a much larger budget. Comedies also do not typically make as much money at the box office. Carrey redefined that notion and changed the entire landscape of the comedy genre. The actor received a great deal of press when he signed a deal for $20 million to star in the 1996 comedy The Cable Guy. The contract was a game-changer for comic actors (just ask Kevin Hart and Adam Sandler).
Producers took notice, and some even complained. One Hollywood executive grew worried and wondered, "If Carrey is getting $20 million, then what are Arnold Schwarzenegger and Tom Hanks worth?” Another 1995 headline read: "H'wood Finds $20 Million Tab for Carrey Plain Scary."
"Every major top-of-the-line movie star got a $5 million raise, that's what happened," said Variety reporter Mike Fleming Jr. "They'd set a ceiling and Jim blew past it." However, even though The Cable Guy brought in over $100 million at the box office, it was Carrey's first true box-office flop because of the movie's hefty budget.
Carrey Almost Died Filming The Storm Scene In 'The Truman Show'
Photo: Paramount PicturesThe exciting climax of the 1998 comedy-drama The Truman Show features the title character getting over his immense fear of the water in order to escape from his fake reality TV show life. Truman is sailing a small boat in his daring escape. Christof (Ed Harris) generates an intense storm in an effort to sink Truman's vessel and stop him from getting away from Seahaven.
The scene may have been filmed in a water tank inside of a movie studio, but that doesn't mean it wasn't dangerous.
Carrey revealed during a 2018 interview with Vanity Fair that he nearly drowned filming the scene:
I was wearing wool clothing - a big, wool sweater, wool pants, and shoes - and they had jet engines blowing on me, and they had these giant wave machines that were creating gale-force waves. I don’t know if you can see it in the film, but they've got divers under the water, and I’m actually giving the signal of like, "I'm in trouble," which was a clenched fist. They just saw it as acting. I went under, I had no breath left, and I was drowning. I was under the water at the bottom of the pool, and with the last breath, with the last hint of consciousness, I just spun and made a couple of gigantic strokes toward the back of the storm and came up outside the storm gasping for air and exhausted. I just barely made it to the edge of the wall where the sky is and hung on the edge of the wall gasping for air, looking back at the storm that was raging still, and it went on for another minute and then slowly shut down. They didn’t know where I was, and then they finally saw me and came over. I almost died. That was the real deal.
Carrey Was Hurt When A Scene With An Ex-Fiancee Look-Alike Was Cut From 'Eternal Sunshine'
Photo: Focus FeaturesEternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind is about a breakup so harsh and heartbreaking that both Joel (Carrey) and Clementine (Kate Winslet) decide to have the other person completely erased from their memory. Carrey is convinced Gondry cast future Grey's Anatomy star Ellen Pompeo in the role of Joel's ex-girlfriend because the actress resembles Renée Zellweger. Carrey and Zellweger were engaged before breaking up right before production started on the film.
"I was pretty hurt," Carrey said. "Michel likes to have real feelings in the scene and real chemistry, so he hired Ellen Pompeo, who's a wonderful actress. But she reminded me completely of Renée. Her look was similar. And I said, 'B*stard!' And it ends up that she's not even in the movie.”
Gondry denies Carrey's claims. "I don't think they look alike," he said. Carrey still pines for Zellweger. In his 2020 semi-autobiographical novel Memoirs and Misinformation, he refers to his Me, Myself & Irene co-star as the "great love of my life."
Carrey Picked Fights With A Former Pro Wrestler While Filming 'Man on the Moon'
Photo: Universal PicturesAndy Kaufman loved to irritate people. He based much of his persona on being annoying and controversial, even to the point where the deadpan comedian would get up on stage in front of a paying audience and read The Great Gatsby instead of telling jokes. In fact, there were times when Kaufman would even yell at an audience member if they started to laugh.
In order to prepare for this role as Kaufman in Milos Forman's 1999 biopic Man on the Moon, Jim Carrey went totally method. He essentially became the Taxi star even after the cameras stopped rolling. Carrey insisted people call him Andy or Tony Clifton (if he was playing that character).
In the 2017 Netflix documentary Jim & Andy: The Great Beyond - Featuring a Very Special, Contractually Obligated Mention of Tony Clifton, the curtain gets pulled back on just how far Carrey went to become Kaufman. One of the most dangerous bits of shenanigans occurred when Carrey taunted muscle-bound professional wrestler Jerry Lawler. In real life, over the course of several years, Kaufman and Lawler pretended to be bitter rivals in true WWE fashion.
Carrey was upset that, due to insurance reasons, he could not perform the piledriver move with Lawler during the movie's wrestling scene. He insisted on authenticity, but the producers wanted a stunt double.
Carrey decided to spit on Lawler to get him to start hitting him. It worked. (Maybe?) Lawler became enraged and hit Carrey to the point where the actor had to be taken to the hospital. Carrey later showed up wearing a neck brace claiming he would not share the screen again with the wrestler. Of course, this is someone portraying Kaufman. What better way to be the comic than to stage the whole event with the guy Kaufman pretended with for years?
Carrey Consulted With A CIA Torture Expert To Handle The Costume In 'How the Grinch Stole Christmas'
Photo: Universal PicturesWho would have ever thought that starring in a children's holiday movie was going to be total torture? Carrey signed on to play the titular Grinch in Ron Howard's 2000 fantasy-comedy How the Grinch Stole Christmas. The career choice nearly drove the actor completely mad.
Putting the elaborate Grinch costume on required Carrey to sit in a makeup chair for eight and a half hours every day during the initial period of filmmaking. The heavy costume was made out of yak fur, which was sewn inside a spandex suit. The actor was also covered in thick makeup and prosthetics. The suit caused Carrey to get so overheated that Howard had to run fans in order to try and control his sweating. Things got so bad for Carrey that he threatened to quit. He described wearing the costume as "being buried alive every day."
Producer Brian Grazer hired a CIA expert trained in pain endurance to help Carrey cope with what the actor felt was complete torture. Carrey said the CIA operative trained him to "eat everything you see. If you're freaking out and you start to spiral downwards, turn the television on, change a pattern, have someone you know come up and smack you in the head, punch yourself in the leg, or smoke as much as you possibly can.”
The expert advice helped. Carrey made it through 92 days of production. The downside is that he also started smoking two packs of cigarettes a day.
Carrey Had An Hour-Long Conversation With Kaufman's Daughter In Character As Kaufman
Photo: Jim & Andy: The Great Beyond / NetflixAndy Kaufman and his high school girlfriend had a daughter in 1969. Maria Colonna Kaufman was subsequently put up for adoption. In the early 1990s, the radiation therapist searched for her birth parents. She discovered that the deceased, irreverent comedian Kaufman was her biological father.
Maria decided to visit the set of her father's 1999 biopic, Man on the Moon. Carrey then proceeded to go method in a way that perhaps had never been done before. As revealed in the Netflix documentary, Jim & Andy: The Great Beyond - Featuring a Very Special, Contractually Obligated Mention of Tony Clifton, Maria had an hour-long conversation with Carrey (who remained in character as her father). The method actor said they spent a lot of their time "telling each other that they love each other."
Carrey Almost Got In A Fight With The Director Over The Sink Bath Scene In 'Eternal Sunshine'
Photo: Focus FeaturesSome directors will do almost anything to get the shot. Michel Gondry took an atypical Hollywood approach to filming Charlie Kaufman's Academy Award-winning screenplay Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. The director insisted on using as much natural light as possible and innovative production design to film several of the surrealist dream-like memory-erasing sequences. Gondry also used practical effects like trick doors and hand-held cameras to avoid CGI as much as possible.
Gondry also drove actress Kate Winslet to extremes during the film's kitchen sink bathtub scene. Carrey and Winslet were forced to sit in the tub for several hours while shooting. The French director reportedly pushed the actress to the point of fainting, and then wanted to continue filming. An angry Carrey stepped in to defend his co-star.
"People’s nerves get frayed," Carrey said. "Michel was going, 'Shoot, shoot!' and she was going, 'I'm nauseous.' And I got angry because she was not feeling well. So, yeah, Michel and I had words."
Gondry even asked the enraged Carrey if he was going to punch him in the face. The relationship remained tumultuous throughout the shoot. "One of the last times Jim yelled at me, I started to yell back and said 'Jim, if you yell at me, I don't like you anymore. And if I don't like you, I can't direct you,'" Gondry said.
Thankfully, the men never came to fisticuffs. They also seemed to repair whatever (if any) fracture they had in their relationship because Gondry and Carrey worked together again on Carrey's Showtime series Kidding.
Carrey Broke Three Ribs Performing A Pratfall In 'Yes Man'
Photo: Warner Bros. PicturesIn the 2008 romantic comedy Yes Man, Carrey's character, Carl Alle,n develops a down-and-out view on life following a difficult divorce. He decides that in order to turn things around, he must start saying "yes" to life's challenges.
Allen embarks on new life experiences like Korean language classes and guitar lessons. The bank loan officer even takes a few daredevil risks like bungee jumping off a bridge. Carrey decided it was important to perform that stunt himself because he "wanted to transcend the movie." The actor survived the bungee jump without a hitch; however, the much more routine pratfalls resulted in three broken ribs, according to Wales Online.
"I broke three ribs just doing a fall in a bar scene - so I was in great shape going into the really rough stuff," says Carrey. "They put everything like the bungee jump to the end of the movie because I had three broken ribs to work with, because halfway through the pratfall, I changed my plan."
"I've done pratfalls my whole life, I know how to do them, but suddenly I decided it would be a good idea to get all four limbs up into the frame at the same time. I came down really hard. The professional comedian in me just got up, finished the scene, put an ice pack on it, sat down, and asked if I could see it back. All I really cared about was, 'Did it look cool?'"
Carrey Personally Fought To Get His Favorite Death Metal Band In 'Ace Ventura: Pet Detective'
Photo: Warner Bros.It's not every day a death metal band gets asked to be in a mainstream Hollywood comedy. Carrey saw Cannibal Corpse during an appearance on The Arsenio Hall Show. He clearly liked what he heard and asked the controversial band responsible for tracks like "Murderous Rampage" and "Make Them Suffer" to make a cameo in his first true starring vehicle, the over-the-top and totally silly Ace Venture: Pet Detective.
At first, Cannibal Corpse was leery about appearing in a comedy. "We were very skeptical. I mean, we’re a brutal death metal band, and Jim Carrey wants us in his movie?" said drummer Paul Mazurkiewicz. "But at that point, we got worried about how we would be portrayed. They didn’t initially say what they wanted us to do, so we wanted to make sure that we weren’t gonna be portrayed in a comedic way. We’re a brutal death metal band, and we’re serious about what we do. This seemed like it would be a cool opportunity, but we didn’t want to be made to look like fools or to be laughed at," added Mazurkiewicz. "But they assured us that we were going to be portrayed as Cannibal Corpse - they weren’t gonna make fun of us."
The band initially turned down Carrey's offer due to scheduling conflicts. However, Carrey wanted Cannibal Corpse so badly, he moved the shooting schedule around to accommodate their touring schedule.
Cannibal Corpse was flattered by the comic's commitment and agreed to appear in the movie. "I mean, Jim wanted us that bad. So of course we agreed to do it," said Mazurkiewicz. "We were just kids from Buffalo, so it was very exciting for us to be wanted in that way."
The band performed a shortened cut of their song "Hammer Smashed Face" in the 1994 hit comedy.
Carrey Wore Out His Welcome With Tommy Lee Jones On 'Batman Forever'
Photo: Warner Bros.To finish out the 1990s Batman trilogy, Batman Forever, director Joel Schumacher brought in two villains to square off against the Caped Crusader. Producers hired known curmudgeon Tommy Lee Jones as Two-Face and the hottest comedy movie star on the planet at the time in Jim Carrey as the Riddler.
Carrey revealed during a 2014 interview with Howard Stern that Jones made it abundantly clear he was not happy about sharing the villainous duties. According to the comic star, Jones got right up in his face and boldly said, "I hate you. I really don't like you... I cannot sanction your buffoonery."
Strange comment considering that Batman Forever was a comic book movie and Jones would be playing a cartoon villain. "I was really looking forward to working with Tommy because he was a fantastic actor, and he still is. I love him. I mean, he's amazing," admitted Carrey. "But he was a little crusty... I think he was just a little freaked out because Dumb and Dumber had come out on the same weekend as Cobb, and Cobb was his big swing for the fences - pardon the pun. And that didn't work out, and it freaked him out."
In 2019, Schumacher confirmed Carrey's take on Jones. "He was fabulous on The Client. But he was not kind to Jim Carrey when we were making Batman Forever," said the director. "Tommy is, and I say this with great respect, a scene stealer. Well, you can’t [swipe] the scene from Jim Carrey. It’s impossible. And I think it irked Tommy."
Carrey Was Able To Turn Around His Grinch-Like On-Set Behavior
Photo: How The Grinch Stole Christmas / Universal PicturesMakeup artist Kazuhiro Tsuji was hired to take on the daunting task of preparing Carrey for his makeup every day. It turned out to be a horrible experience for the actor and many of the crew members working on How the Grinch Stole Christmas.
“Once we were on set, he was really mean to everybody, and at the beginning of the production, they couldn’t finish," said Tsuji. "After two weeks, we only could finish three days’ worth of shooting schedule, because suddenly he would just disappear, and when he came back, everything was ripped apart. We couldn’t shoot anything.”
Tsuji and the film's producers decided the makeup artist should take a break to see if Carrey would miss his expertise. Carrey realized he needed Tsuji's help and vowed to change his Grinch-like ways. The makeup artist returned to work. Carrey was then subsequently able to keep his diva-like status in check.
Carrey's Tooth Was Actually Chipped In 'Dumb and Dumber'
Photo: New Line CinemaPart of the charm of Carrey's character Lloyd Christmas in Dumb and Dumber stems from his kooky grin and facial expressions. Carrey started on the road to method acting early. To get into the dim-witted character, Carrey went to a dentist to remove the cap that covered up a tooth he chipped in grade school.
”Clark La Prairie jumped on my head in grade school detention,” said Carrey. "The nuns sent me home with my tooth in an envelope.”
"De Niro gains weight. I file my teeth off,” added Carrey.
Carrey Wanted An Absurd Haircut For The Riddler
Photo: Batman Forever / Warner Bros.The Riddler's costume sports several question marks, so Carrey figured he would bring that campy fashion sensibility to his hairstyle. The funnyman thought about taking a page out of what several athletes of the day were doing when they shaved their jersey numbers directly into their hairdos. The committed actor nearly shaved a huge question mark into his hair with the highlighted feature of the dot landing at the top of his spine.
Two major factors stopped Carrey. First, his hair would not have grown back in time for the start of production of the Ace Ventura: Pet Detective sequel. Also, more importantly, the actor was scheduled to appear in divorce court where he was probably hoping to convey a much more professional appearance.
