Jim Carrey: Carrey'd Away

The wave can also bring good stuff, like the fabulous babes. Then again, when Carrey was 21 years old, he was having an affair with Linda Ronstadt, who was 37 at the time. What was that like? "We met at The Comedy Store when she was looking for an opening act," he recalls, smiling. "Instead, we took a shine to each other. She's a very cool lady, very smart, a very good person. We didn't live together, but I spent a lot of time in 'the big house.' For me, it was exciting, going to parties. She taught me how to act older than I was. It was something I knew was never going to amount to anything, but something really good. Now I get a lot of phone numbers I don't use. I have a ton of opportunities, but I'm not a dog about it or anything. I was married for seven years and have just gone through a divorce. It's very difficult when I've met people I've really dug--it's like I have to put a disclaimer in there all the time, 'Look, I'm going to be going crazy for a while and I don't know exactly what I'm gonna do, but I'm certainly not gonna commit to another relationship for a while.'"

And how does Carrey deal with the other kinds of crazy stuff that go with sudden stardom: fawning hangers-on, yes men, isolation, the potential Eddie Murphy trip? "I don't ever want to get jaded or lazy or let things slide by," Carrey asserts. "I'm trying to do now what Rodney Dangerfield used to tell me: 'Make the tank strong enough so that nobody's fuckup can stop it.'"

Carrey's tank really got rolling when Ace Ventura, despite a critical drubbing, won him fans by the zillions. I tell him that I caught the movie only the previous night, when I was dead certain that this interview was going to come off. And I laughed more than I care to admit. But, funny as he is in this cinematic dementia, doesn't he think they got lucky? "Every day we were shooting, Tom [Shadyac, the co-writer and director] and I would just look at each other and go, 'What the hell are we doing, man?' Because we knew that somebody, like the Siskels and Ebairs of the world--" Carrey revels in pronouncing the pudgy Ebert's name in a haughty, "r"-rolling Parisian accent-- "was going to hate it. Yes, Siskel and Ebair had their field day with me. They don't take into account that we tried to do something different, that we went out on a limb. I see 1994 as the year that America decided to take 'Two thumbs down' as a recommendation to go out and see a movie. As soon as I heard about their review, I told the studio, 'Put that in the fucking ad, man!'"

So, is Carrey telling me that he thinks the critics were wrong? That the flick was actually good? Not exactly. "[The producers] were after me for about two years to do the project. And I hated the script, which if it had been shot as is, would have been embarrassing, horrible. It was not doable. I told them, 'The only thing I like about this is that it's a pet detective.' Then they brought on Tom, who had an interesting slant on things and was completely clued in to where I needed to be. For the first big movie out of the box, I thought it was important to give the audience Jim Carrey full-out. [The studio] said, basically, 'You can rewrite it from page one' and they gave me script approval."

How does Carrey describe his creation, Ace? "When I sat down with Tom, I said, Rock'n'roll sensibility. Ace looks different from anybody you'll see on the street. He's brilliant, has incredible instincts like Sherlock Holmes. He doesn't give a shit. He's not an anarchist, really, but someone with a problem with authority. He goes crazy in those situations. This is a lot like me He's not only gotta get all the women, he's got to satisfy them to the nth degree, to the point where it's ridiculous. He's gotta be able to fight, fuck, and figure things out. He's completely confident, which is always sexy, because you know when a guy is that confident, he's got a big dick. In fact, for the sequel, instead of the camera starting on his shoes, maybe we'll start on his dick."

If things keep popping for Carrey, who earned $350,000 to play Ace (extra for helping salvage the script) and could grab as much as $10 million for the sequel, should he want Ace II to open on Ace's joint, that's what he'll get. But the experience he calls "the best time of my life, yet the worst time of my life" took its toll. "At the same I time I was doing Ace, my marriage was falling apart," he explains. "There were times I had to be sent home from the set because I was so out of it. The cliché-ness of what happens with marriages busting up in Hollywood bothers me. I mean, shooting the movie was like walking on the moon, then you come home and it's, 'Take out the garbage,' and you're like, 'You don't understand: I just planted the flag!' It must have been like living with a caged animal." We're about to get another blast of Carrey's many sides in The Mask, the id action-fantasy based on the best-selling Dark Horse comic book of the same name. Some industry pundits have been predicting it could be one of the movies of the summer. The flick, which features Carrey in dual roles, has leading-edge special effects by Industrial Light and Magic and a musical production number featuring the star backed by a chorus of 50 dancing policemen.

"Every generation needs a Jekyll and Hyde story and this is a good twist on that," he says of the film in which he plays a meek bank clerk who happens on an ancient mask with transformational powers that turn him into a fabulous alter ego, The Mask. He declares the finished movie "the kind of thing that, if I were a kid, I would say, 'Dad, if you don't take me to see this, I'll make your life a living hell.'

"The Mask persona is Fred Astaire on acid, Jim Carrey out of his mind," Carrey continues. "He's someone who, when he walks into a room, is gonna fuck it till it bleeds, leaving everyone to go, 'Ooooooh, what just happened?' The protagonist, Stanley Ipkiss, is a genuinely sweet guy who just wants to be kind to people and gets run over all the time--kind of like my father, the sweetest guy in the world. What was so great is that preview audiences they've shown it to really like sweet, nice Stanley as much or more than The Mask. That, after being so 'cartoon' as Ace, makes me really happy."

Jim Carrey grew up Catholic in Burlington and Jackson's Point, both suburbs of Toronto. "Like most Catholic boys," he recalls, "I wanted to be Jesus Christ. I could never get the turn-the-other-cheek thing down, though." His father, "a great guy," was a sax-and-clarinet man who had once fronted his own orchestra and later became a company controller, despite being "an awful businessman." When Carrey's father lost the job after nearly 30 years, Carrey and his brother and sisters had to drop out of high school to work as janitors and k security guards in a tirerim factory.

"I look at stuff that's happened in my life like it's The Grapes of Wrath" he says, with a jaunty shrug. "You know, you'll always win in the end if you don't let the problems make you angry. I've been through some wild times. When my father lost his job and I was 13, we went from lower-middle class to complete poverty, living in a Volkswagen camper. My father was not good at business because he was too nice. I learned from that, not to be too nice when it comes down to the crunch. I definitely have an edge because of all that. But nothing made me go, 'Life sucks, people suck.' I now want to make sure that my daughter Jane's financial future is as secure as I can possibly make it. That I'll be able to look after myself when I'm old. That drives me. Definitely."

"I've always believed in magic," Carrey continues. "When I wasn't doing anything in this town, I'd go up every night, sit on Mulholland Drive, look out at the city, stretch out my arms and say, 'Everybody wants to work with me. I'm a really good actor. I have all kinds of great movie offers.' I'd just repeat these things over and over, literally convincing myself that I had a couple of movies lined up. I'd drive down that hill, ready to take the world on, going, 'Movie offers are out there for me. I just don't hear them yet.' It was like total affirmations, antidotes to the stuff that stems from my family background, from knowing how things can go sour. Still, I've had times that, when I'd walk down the street, I'd look at the street people and feel like, 'I'm already one of them. I'm already there.' I mean, I can scare the shit out of myself."

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