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I don't think anybody should go through life without a team of psychologists.
I have been through times when I'm literally squatting in the living room,
having one of those open-throated cries, where you're crying all the way
to your butthole. I always believed I would come out of it, though.
I don't make it in regular channels, and that's okay for me.
My life is not unlike Truman's. I can't go anywhere.
Life is an ordeal, albeit an exciting one, but I wouldn't trade it for
the good old days of poverty and obscurity.
I don't think anybody is interesting until they've had the shit kicked
out of them. The pain is there for a reason. A lot of times when I was
in those depressions, I also had the thing going through my head that this
is what I've asked for. I've prayed to God that I would have depth as an
artist and have things to say. I've said, No matter what, keep me sane
but give me what I need.
Like most Catholic boys, I wanted to be Jesus Christ. I could never get
the turn-the-other-cheek thing down, though.
I'm so wrapped up in my work that it's often impossible to consider other
things in my life. My marriage ended in divorce because of this, my relationship
with Holly has suffered by this. It's hard for anybody who's been with
me not to feel starved for affection when I'm making love to my ideas.
Maybe it's not meant for me to settle down and be married.
Creative people don't behave very well generally. If you're looking for
examples of good relationships in show business, you're gonna be depressed
real fast. I don't have time for anything else right now but work and my
daughter. She's my first priority.
Until Ace Ventura, no actor had considered
talking through his ass.
I just want to be killer funny. You know kick ass piss in your pants run
out of the theatre and rip you dick off and throw yourself into traffic
funny!
I try to do something the audience might not have seen before. Like if
I'm gonna kiss a girl I wanna kiss her like a girl has never been kissed.
Like maybe I would kick her legs out from under her and catch her right
before she hits the ground and then kiss her.
My focus is to forget the pain of life. Forget the pain, mock the pain,
reduce it. And laugh.
Before I do anything, I think, well what hasn't been seen. Sometimes, that
turns out to be something ghastly and not fit for society. And sometimes
that inspiration becomes something that 's really worthwhile.
My performing started out as a mixture of things. It's really not all angst
and I-gotta-go-onstage-or-I'm-gonna-kill- somebody kind of thing. Some
of it is the anger, but it was born from really, truly, just wanting to
be special and to be noticed and wanting to make people laugh. It was really
born from that, so it comes from a good place. It's just - the tools are
your anger, the tools are your sadness, the tools are your joy, the tools
are voices, faces - the tools are all those things.
The comedian's who inspired me are, like, Dick Van Dyke. Loved Dick Van
Dyke. Jimmy Stewart. Well, he wasn't a comedian, but he was a character
that I really, really liked. I learned how to say 'F***', by listening
to Richard Pryor. No. But there's guys like that who opened doors to realms
for me. Like Richard Pryor and guys like Sam Kinison. You watch them and
then you go, well maybe your gotta give up a little more to, you know,
push the buttons these days.
It's nice to finally get scripts offered
to me that aren't the ones Tom Hanks wipes his butt with.
There was a time when people said, 'Jim, if you keep on making faces, your
face will freeze like that.' Now they just say, 'Pay him!'
I don't care if people think I am an overactor, as long as they enjoy what
I do. People who think that would call Van Gogh an overpainter.
If I had never ventured beyond being a stand-up comic, then I would be
sitting in my house today working on my Leonardo DiCaprio impression.
I absolutely want to have a career where you make'em laugh and make'em
cry. It's all theater.
One thing I hope I'll never be is drunk with my own power. And anybody
who says I am will never work in this town again.
Life opens up opportunities to you, and you either take them or you stay
afraid of taking them. I've never been one to sit back and go, 'I'd better
do what the audience wants me to do, because I don't want to lose them.'
It was such a leap in my career when 'Truman Show' came along. It's always
been a long process for me insofar as recognition goes, but that's OK because
you appreciate it when it comes.
I'm afraid, I guess, that I won't be able to watch anymore. Everything
I do comes from watching and observing, and I'm concerned that I won't
be able to be the watcher because I'm the watched. I've already had so
much success, I could quit now and say, 'Thanks very much, you guys have
been more than nice to me,' but I really would like to keep working and,
hopefully, growing and challenging myself.
I probably had some pretty bad hair days, but I was never an ugly person.
I tend to stay up late, not because I'm partying but because it's the only
time of the day when I'm alone and don't have to be performing.
I'm the kind of person who needs to lock himself in a room for three days
and just get dirty.
I'm a hard guy to live with. I'm like a caged animal. I'm up all night
walking around the living room. It's hard for me to come down from what
I do.
I need privacy. I would think that because what I do makes a lot of people
happy that I might deserve a little bit of respect in return. Instead,
the papers try to drag me off my pedestal.
I never thought of myself as suave or debonair. I mean, I believe in myself
and I believe I'm an attractive person, but I don't think of myself as
Cary Grant.
Most of the time I live with my pain. I have pain but I won't show it around.
I think that's the nobility of the character. There's something noble in
not spewing on people all the time about your problems. I'm the light guy,
so I identified.
I enjoy fame except when I'm with my daughter. Kids stop me all the time
and I don't want her to be jealous of the attention. Also, sometimes I
just want to be left alone and I refuse to make rubber faces. That's when
they start asking, 'What's the matter, man, don't you like your job?' I
say, 'Yeah, I like my job. But I also like having sex, and I'm not going
to do that in front of you either.
I basically, I think I have moments of, ah, I don't want to say genius
but I have moments of ahm, when my muse is really hooked up. But for the
most part, I'm just a worker. I go to work. I work.
Ya know what I do almost every day? I wash. Personal hygiene is part of
the package with me.
What I have in common with the character in ‘Truman’ is this incredible
need to please people. I feel like I want to take care of everyone and
I also feel this terrible guilt if I am unable to. And I have felt this
way ever since all this success started.
I used to draw a lot. If my mother would ask me to do something else, I'd
have a hairy conniption. I'd just go crazy.
I praticed making faces in the mirror and it would drive my mother crazy.
She used to scare me by saying that I was going to see the devil if I kept
looking in the mirror. That fascinated me even more, of course.
I know this sounds strange, but as a kid, I was really shy. Painfully shy.
The turning point was freshman year, when I was the biggest geek alive.
No one, I mean no one, even talked to me. I was that weird Jim Boy - you
know, ' Stay away from him.' Then I suddenly realized that all the shtick
I pulled at home could also work at school. I recall the first day that
I stood in front of the school and fell up the stairs. People started self-combusting
with laughter. I went from 'Jim's a geek' to 'Jim really is a moron, but
we like it!' From then on, there was no stopping me - I was relentless.
Every class became The Jim Carrey Show. I was like a disease in the class.
I remember being sent out of the room a lot. The hall became my domain.
My report card always said, 'Jim finishes first and then disrupts the other
students'.
For some reason I did something where I realized I could get a reaction.
That was when I broke out of my shell at school, because I really didn't
have any friends or anything like that and I just kind of was going along,
and then finally I did this zany thing, and all of a sudden I had tons
of friends
My teacher in the seventh grade told me that if I didn't fool around during
class, I could have 15 minutes at the end of the day to do a comedy routine.
Instead of bugging everybody, I'd figure out my routine. And at the end
of the day, I'd get to perform in front of my entire class. I thought it
was really smart of her. It's amazing how important that was.
My first experience on stage started in second grade. I was in music class
and we were practicing for the Christmas assembly. One day I started fooling
around by mocking the musicians on a record. The teacher thought she'd
embarrass me by making me get up and do what I was doing in front of the
whole class. So I went up and did it. She laughed, and the whole class
went nuts. My teacher asked me to do my routine for the Christmas assembly,
and I did. That was the beginning of the end.
When the first big paycheque with Dumb And Dumber hit, I went: 'Gosh, I
wonder if this will affect my performance. Will I do a take and think,
was that worth $7 million?' But that never happened. If anything, it made
me rebel against that thing when people who get rich start playing it safe.
The money can be a hindrance to someone like me because the danger is that
you start thinking, 'Is that a $20 million take?' That kind of thing, and
being self-critical.
I'm the first to admit this whole salary thing is getting out of control.
In the final analysis, it's still about the work. The whole time I was
filming The Cable Guy, I kept reminding myself that if a scene didn't work,
the $20 million would bite me in the butt.
I refuse to feel guilty. I feel guilty about too much in my life but not
about money. I went through periods when I had nothing, so somebody in
my family has to get stinkin' wealthy.
I haven't been as wild with my money as somebody like me might have been.
I've been very safe, very conservative with investments. I don't blow money.
I don't have a ton of houses. I know things can go away. I've already had
that experience.
I've tried everything. I've done therapy, I've done colonics. I went to
a psychic who had me running around town buying pieces of ribbon to fill
the colors in my aura. Did the Prozac thing.
If we (Lauren and Jim) ever get married, we're just going to put helmets
on, run into each other from a hundred yards, and smash together like rams
(July '95).
For me, it seems impossible to have an incredible career and an incredible
relationship. Right now, if I can't have both, I choose the career. Lauren
and I are still great friends but that's all I can offer her these days.
That's all I can offer any woman. They have to be willing to take it or
leave it (May '96).
My mother was a professional sick person; she took a lot of pain pills.
There are many people like that. It's just how they are used to getting
attention. I always remember she's the daughter of alcoholics who'd leave
her alone at Christmas time.
My dad was like a stage mother he always pushed me to do what I wanted.
We had problems like all families but we had a lot of love. I was extremely
loved. We always felt we had each other.
I got a lot of support from my parents. That's the one thing I always appreciated.
They didn't tell me I was being stupid; they told me I was being funny.
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