Jim Carrey
Jim Carrey | |
|---|---|
 Jim Carrey in 2008 | |
| Born | James Eugene Carrey January 17, 1962 Newmarket, Ontario, Canada |
| Occupation(s) | Actor, comedian |
| Years active | 1979–present |
| Spouse(s) |
Melissa Womer (m. 1987–1995) |
| Children | 1 |
| Website | JimCarrey.com |
James Eugene "Jim" Carrey (born January 17, 1962) is a Canadian-American actor and comedian. He has received two Golden Globe Awards and has also been nominated on four occasions. Carrey began comedy in 1979, performing at Yuk Yuk's in Toronto, Ontario. After gaining prominence in 1981, he began working at The Comedy Store in Los Angeles where he was soon noticed by comedian Rodney Dangerfield, who immediately signed him to open his tour performances. Carrey, long interested in film and television, developed a close friendship with comedian Damon Wayans, which landed him a role in the sketch comedy hit In Living Color, in which he portrayed various characters during the show's 1990 season.
Having had little success in television movies and several low-budget films, Carrey was cast as the title character in Ace Ventura: Pet Detective which premiered in February, 1994, making more than $72 million domestically despite receiving mixed critical reception.[1] The film spawned a sequel, Ace Ventura: When Nature Calls (1995), in which he reprised the role of Ventura. High profile roles followed when he was cast as Stanley Ipkiss in The Mask (1994) for which he gained a Golden Globe Award nomination for Best Actor in a Musical or Comedy, and as Lloyd Christmas in the comedy film Dumb and Dumber (1994).
Between 1996 and 1999, Carrey continued his success after earning lead roles in several highly popular films including The Cable Guy (1996), Liar Liar (1997), in which he was nominated for another Golden Globe Award and in the critically acclaimed films The Truman Show and Man on the Moon, in 1998 and 1999, respectively. Both films earned Carrey Golden Globe awards. Since earning both awards, Carrey continued to star in comedy films, including How the Grinch Stole Christmas (2000) where he played the title character, Bruce Almighty (2003) where he portrayed the role of unlucky TV reporter Bruce Nolan, Lemony Snicket's A Series of Unfortunate Events (2004), Fun with Dick and Jane (2005), Yes Man (2008), and A Christmas Carol (2009). Carrey has also taken on more serious roles including Joel Barish in Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (2004) alongside Kate Winslet and Kirsten Dunst, which earned him another Golden Globe nomination, and Steven Jay Russell in I Love You Phillip Morris (2009) alongside Ewan McGregor.
Early life
Carrey was born in Newmarket, Ontario, the son of Kathleen (née Oram), a homemaker, and Percy Carrey, a musician and accountant.[2][3] He has three older siblings, John, Patricia, and Rita. He was raised Roman Catholic.[4][5] His mother was of French, {{citation}}: Empty citation (help) Irish, {{citation}}: Empty citation (help) and Scottish descent[6] and his father was of French Canadian ancestry (the family's original surname was Carré).[7][8] After his family moved to Scarborough, Ontario, when Carrey was 14 years old, he attended Blessed Trinity Catholic School, in North York, for two years, enrolled at Agincourt Collegiate Institute for another year, then briefly attended Northview Heights Secondary School for the remainder of his high school career (all together, he spent three years in Grade 10).
Carrey lived in Burlington, Ontario, for eight years and attended Aldershot High School, where he once opened for 1980s new wave band Spoons. In a Hamilton Spectator interview (February 2007), Carrey remarked, "If my career in show business hadn't panned out I would probably be working today in Hamilton, Ontario at the Dofasco steel mill." When looking across the Burlington Bay toward Hamilton, he could see the mills and thought, "Those were where the great jobs were."[9] At this point, he already had experience working in a science testing facility in Richmond Hill, Ontario.
Career
Comedy
In 1979, under the management of Leatrice Spevack, Carrey started doing stand-up comedy at Yuk Yuk's in Toronto, where he rose to become a headliner in February 1981, shortly after his 19th birthday. One reviewer in the Toronto Star raved that Carrey was "a genuine star coming to life."[10] In the early 1980s, Carrey moved to Los Angeles and started working at The Comedy Store, where he was noticed by comedian Rodney Dangerfield, who signed the young comedian to open Dangerfield's tour performances.
Carrey then turned his attention to the film and television industries, auditioning to be a cast member for the 1980–1981 season of NBC's Saturday Night Live. Carrey was not selected for the position (although he did host the show in May 1996, and again in January 2011). Joel Schumacher had him audition for a role in D.C. Cab, though in the end, nothing ever came of it.[11] His first lead role on television was Skip Tarkenton, a young animation producer on NBC's short-lived The Duck Factory, airing from April 12, 1984, to July 11, 1984, and offering a behind-the-scenes look at the crew that produced a children's cartoon. Carrey continued working in smaller film and television roles, which led to a friendship with fellow comedian Damon Wayans, who co-starred with Carrey as an extraterrestrial in 1989's Earth Girls Are Easy. When Wayans' brother Keenen began developing a sketch comedy show for Fox called In Living Color, Carrey was hired as a cast member, whose unusual characters included masochistic, accident-prone safety inspector Fire Marshall Bill, and masculine female bodybuilder Vera de Milo.
Film
Carrey made his film debut in Rubberface (1981), which was released as Introducing...Janet. Later that year, he won the leading role in Damian Lee's Canadian skiing comedy Copper Mountain, which included his impersonation of Sammy Davis Jr. Since the film had a less than one hour runtime consisting largely of musical performances by Rita Coolidge and Rompin' Ronnie Hawkins, it was not considered a genuine feature film. Two years later, in 1985, Carrey saw his first major starring role in the dark comedy Once Bitten, in the role of Mark Kendall, a teen virgin pursued by a 400-year-old female vampire, played by Lauren Hutton. After supporting roles in films such as Peggy Sue Got Married (1986), Earth Girls Are Easy (1988), and The Dead Pool (1988), Carrey did not experience true stardom until starring in the 1994 comedy Ace Ventura: Pet Detective, which premiered only months before In Living Color ended. Ace Ventura was panned by critics, and earned Carrey a 1995 Golden Raspberry Award nomination as Worst New Star.[12] But the film was as embraced by fans as it was derided by critics. The Ventura character became a pop icon, [citation needed] and the film made Carrey a superstar. It was a commercial success, as were his two other starring roles from that year: The Mask and Dumb and Dumber. In 1995, Carrey appeared as the Riddler in Batman Forever and reprised his role as Ace Ventura in Ace Ventura: When Nature Calls. Both films were successful at the box office and earned Carrey multi-million-dollar paychecks. [citation needed] Carrey earned $20 million for his next film, The Cable Guy (directed by Ben Stiller), a record sum for a comedy actor. [citation needed] The film did not do well with critics, but Carrey quickly rebounded with the successful Liar Liar, a return to his trademark comedy style.
Carrey took a slight pay cut to play a more serious role to star in the critically praised[13] science-fiction film The Truman Show (1998), a change of pace that led to forecasts of Academy Award nominations. Although the movie was nominated for three other awards, Carrey did not personally receive a nomination, leading him to joke that "it's an honor just to be nominated...oh no," during his appearance on the Oscar telecast.[14] However, Carrey did win a Golden Globe for Best Actor in a Drama and an MTV Movie Award for Best Male Performance. That same year, Carrey appeared as a fictionalized version of himself on the final episode of Garry Shandling's The Larry Sanders Show, in which he deliberately ripped into Shandling's character. In 1999, Carrey won the role of comedian Andy Kaufman in Man on the Moon. Despite critical acclaim, he was not nominated for an Academy Award, but again won a Best Actor Golden Globe award for the second consecutive year. In 2000, Carrey reteamed with the Farrelly Brothers, who had directed him in Dumb and Dumber, in their comedy, Me, Myself & Irene, about a state trooper with multiple personalities who romances a woman played by Renée Zellweger. The film grossed $24 million on its opening weekend and $90 million by the end of its domestic run.[citation needed]
In 2003, Carrey reteamed with Tom Shadyac for the financially successful comedy Bruce Almighty. Earning over $242 million in the U.S. and over $484 million worldwide, this film became the second highest grossing live-action comedy of all time. [citation needed] His performance in Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind in 2004 earned high praise from critics,[15][16][17] who again predicted that Carrey would receive an Oscar nomination; the film did win for Best Original Screenplay, and co-star Kate Winslet received an Oscar nomination for her performance. (Carrey was also nominated for a sixth Golden Globe for his performance).
In 2004, he played the villainous Count Olaf in Lemony Snicket's A Series of Unfortunate Events, which was based on the popular children's novels of the same name. He was also inducted into the Canadian Walk of Fame that year.[18] In 2005, Carrey starred in a remake of Fun with Dick and Jane, playing Dick, a husband who becomes a bank robber after he loses his job. In 2007, Carrey reunited with Joel Schumacher, director of Batman Forever, for The Number 23, a psychological thriller co-starring Virginia Madsen and Danny Huston. In the film, Carrey plays a man who becomes obsessed with the number 23, after finding a book about a man with the same obsession. Carrey has stated that he finds the prospect of reprising a character to be considerably less enticing than taking on a new role.[19] The only time he has reprised a role was with Ace Ventura. (Sequels to Bruce Almighty, Dumb and Dumber, and The Mask have all been released without Carrey's involvement.) As of December 2010, Carrey's films grossed over $2.3 billion in total.[20]
In 2010, Carrey was the narrator of the documentary film, Under the Sea 3D.[21]
In 2010, Carrey spoke of his reasons for dropping out of the movie The Three Stooges (film) as curly. Carrey said "For me, I don’t really want to do anything halfway, and I don’t feel like a fat suit does it. I started experimenting with it a little bit, and I gained 35, 40 pounds. I wanted to gain another 30, 40. When you’re [Robert] De Niro in your 20s or early 30s, you can kind of come back from that. It’s a tough thing to come back from when you’re upwards of 30. Your body can’t carry it or you can have a cardiac arrest." [22]
On April 1, 2012 it was confirmed that Carrey along with Jeff Daniels would return for Dumb and Dumber 2. Bobby and Peter Farrelly will direct and write the script with the movie going into production in September 2012.[23]
Personal life
Family and relationships
Carrey has been married twice, first to former actress and Comedy Store waitress Melissa Womer on March 28, 1987; the two were divorced in late 1995. Their only child, a daughter named Jane Erin Carrey,[24] was born on September 6, 1987, in Los Angeles County. After his separation from Womer in 1994, Carrey began dating his Dumb and Dumber co-star Lauren Holly. They were married on September 23, 1996; the marriage lasted less than a year.
In December 2005, Carrey began dating actress and model Jenny McCarthy. They made their relationship public in June 2006. She announced on The Ellen DeGeneres Show on April 2, 2008, that the two were then living together, but had no plans to marry; as they do not need a "piece of paper." In April 2010, Carrey and McCarthy ended their near five-year relationship.[25]
In Los Angeles on February 27, 2010, Carrey announced via his Twitter account[26] that he had become a grandfather when his daughter Jane gave birth to her first child with musician husband Alex Santana, who performs in the band Blood Money under the stage name Nitro. He announced that his grandson's name was Jackson Riley Santana.
On the 11th season of the reality show singing competition American Idol, Carrey's daughter Jane auditioned during the January 22, 2012 episode. Jane was put through to the Hollywood round, but was put out after the first round.[27] Jane was later sent home after the first round of Hollywood.
Citizenship
Carrey received U.S. citizenship in October 2004 and remains a dual citizen of both the United States and his native Canada.[28]
Depression
Carrey discussed his bouts of depression in a November 2004 interview on 60 Minutes.
Friendship with Eckhart Tolle
Carrey is a great admirer and friend of author Eckhart Tolle, and in June 2009, Carrey gave an introduction for Tolle when together they headlined the first conference of the Global Alliance for Transformational Entertainment.[29][30][31][32]
Beliefs
Carrey has been a critic of the scientific consensus that no evidence links the childhood MMR vaccination to the development of autism, and wrote an article questioning the merits of vaccination and vaccine research for the Huffington Post.[33] With former partner Jenny McCarthy, Carrey led a "Green Our Vaccines" march in Washington, D.C., to advocate for the removal of toxins from children's vaccines, out of a belief that children had received "too many vaccines, too soon, many of which are toxic".[34]
Filmography
Television
| Year | Title | Role | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1980 | The All-Night Show | Various voices | (voice only) |
| 1981 | Rubberface | Tony Moroni | Television movie |
| 1984 | Buffalo Bill | Jerry Lewis Impersonator | Television series (uncredited) |
| The Duck Factory | Skip Tarkenton | Television series | |
| 1989 | Mike Hammer: Murder Takes All | Brad Peters | Television movie |
| 1990 | In Living Color | Various roles | Television series |
| 1991 | Jim Carrey's Unnatural Act[35][36] | himself | Television comedy special |
| 1992 | Doing Time on Maple Drive | Tim Carter | Television movie |
| 1994 | Space Ghost Coast to Coast | Himself | Television series (two episodes) |
| 2011 | The Office | Finger Lakes guy | Episode: "Search Committee" Nominated - People's Choice Award for Favorite TV Guest Star |
| 2012 | 30 Rock | Leap Dave Williams | Episode: "Leap Day" |
Other appearances
| Year | Song | Album |
|---|---|---|
| 1998 | "I Am the Walrus" | In My life |
Other accolades
| Year | Nominee / work | Award | Result |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2001 | People's Choice Awards | Favorite Motion Picture Star in a Comedy | Won |
| 2003 | Teen Choice Awards | Choice Comedian | Won |
| 2004 | Nominated | ||
| 2005 | People's Choice Awards | Favorite Funny Male Star | Won |
| Teen Choice Awards | Choice Comedian | Nominated | |
| 2006 | MTV Movie Awards | MTV Generation Award | Won |
| 2009 | People's Choice Awards | Favorite Funny Male Star | Nominated |
| 2010 | Kids' Choice Awards | Favorite voice from animated movie | Won |
| 2012 | People's Choice Awards | Favorite TV Guest Star | Nominated |
| 2012 | 2012 Kids' Choice Awards | Favorite Movie Actor | Nominated |
References
- ^ "Boxofficemojo.com".
- ^ "USA WEEKEND Magazine". Usaweekend.com. May 25, 2003. Retrieved November 21, 2009. [dead link]
- ^ "Jim Carrey Biography (1962-)". Filmreference.com. Retrieved November 21, 2009.
- ^ Puig, Claudia (May 27, 2003). "Spiritual Carrey still mighty funny". USA Today. Retrieved November 21, 2009.
- ^ "Jim Carrey: Carrey'd Away". Movieline. January 7, 1994. Retrieved October 8, 2010.
- ^ "Jim Carrey Online • View topic - Scottish Interview & Clip". Jimcarreyonline.com. Retrieved February 7, 2011.
- ^ Stated on Inside the Actors Studio
- ^ "Jim Carrey: The Joker Is Wild (2000)". Knelman, Martin. U.S.: Firefly Books Ltd. p. 8. ISBN 1-55209-535-5 (U.S.). ASIN 1552095355.
{{cite web}}: Check|asin=value (help); Missing or empty|url=(help) - ^ Holt, Jim (February 26, 2007). "It's all in the numbers: Jim Carrey could be at Dofasco if Hollywood hadn't worked out". The Hamilton Spectator. pp. Go14.
- ^ "Up, up goes a new comic star," Bruce Blackadar, Toronto Star, February 27, 1981, p. C1.
- ^ Batman Forever Commentary by director Joel Schumacher. Warner Brothers. 2005.
{{cite AV media}}:|format=requires|url=(help) - ^ Razzie Awards: 1995
- ^ "The Truman Show Movie Reviews, Pictures". Rotten Tomatoes. Retrieved November 21, 2009.
- ^ "Jim Carrey - Rotten Tomatoes Celebrity Profile". Rottentomatoes.com. Retrieved November 21, 2009.
- ^ CNN.com "the best, most mature and sharply focused performance ever from Jim Carrey"
- ^ Rolling Stone "Jim Carrey [...] has never done anything this deeply felt. [...] grounded and groundbreaking [performance by] Carrey"
- ^ Washington Post "[Carrey] rises to the challenge with ease, humor and depth of feeling"
- ^ "Jim Carrey, 2004 inductee". Canada's Walk of Fame. Retrieved September 10, 2011.
- ^ JimCarreyOnline.com : "I'm getting the opportunity to do all these new and wonderful things. Why waste my life being repetitive? A lot of people do sequels. I think it's not as enticing as doing something new."
- ^ "Jim Carrey - Box Office Mojo Profile". Boxofficemojo.com. Retrieved March 28, 2011.
- ^ "Jim Carrey". Rotten Tomatoes. Retrieved January 8, 2012.
- ^ http://www.slashfilm.com/jim-carrey-explains-stooges-film-dead/
- ^ http://www.comingsoon.net/news/movienews.php?id=88661
- ^ No Lie - Jim Carrey Will Be a Grandfather - Jim Carrey's 21-year-old daughter is expecting! July 10, 2009, People.
- ^ "Jim Carrey And Jenny McCarthy Announce Split After Five Years Together | Showbiz News | Sky News". News.sky.com. Retrieved February 7, 2011.
- ^ JimCarrey. "Jim Carrey (JimCarrey) on Twitter". Twitter. Retrieved February 7, 2011.
- ^ "Jane Carrey: Jim Carrey's Daughter On 'American Idol' Audition (VIDEO)". The Huffington Post. January 23, 2012. Retrieved January 29, 2012.
- ^ Silverman, Stephen M. (October 14, 2004). "Jim Carrey Becomes New U.S. Citizen". People.com. Retrieved September 10, 2011.
- ^ Eckhart Tolle Biography. New York Times (2008-03-05). Times Topics.
- ^ Stein, Joel (February 14, 2007). "Has Jim Carrey Flipped Out?". TIME. Retrieved February 7, 2011.
- ^ James Rainey (2009-06-05).Jim Carrey and friends opt for consciousness-raising over Lakers. Los Angeles Times. Retrieved 2010-06-22.
- ^ by EckhartTolle TV. "Jim Carrey's Full Introduction for Eckhart Tolle". Vimeo.com. Retrieved February 7, 2011.
- ^ "Jim Carrey: The Judgment on Vaccines Is In???". Huffington Post. Retrieved February 7, 2011.
- ^ Brady, Jonann; Dahle, Stephanie (June 4, 2008). "Celeb Couple to Lead 'Green Vaccine' Rally". ABC News. Retrieved March 16, 2011.
- ^ http://www.jimcarreyonline.com/movies/unnaturalact.html
- ^ http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0251156/
Further reading
- Krulik, Nancy (2001). Jim Carrey: Fun and Funnier. Simon & Schuster. ISBN 0743422198Template:Inconsistent citations
{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: postscript (link)
External links
- 1962 births
- Living people
- 20th-century actors
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- 21st-century actors
- Actors from Ontario
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- Best Drama Actor Golden Globe (film) winners
- Best Musical or Comedy Actor Golden Globe (film) winners
- Canadian comedians
- Canadian expatriate actors in the United States
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- People from Burlington, Ontario
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- People from Scarborough, Ontario
- Anti-vaccination activists