With his usual radicalism, Jim Carrey surprised us by saying: “give up hope”, as a way of enduring the time we live in. The phrase, launched during the Michael Moore show, The terms of My Surrender, presented on Broadway a few years ago, was born from the way Carrey has been dealing with his career over the years and questioned the image of what is considered one of the best comedy actors of the last decades, although it was in dramatic roles that he won the definitive admiration of the public and the critics, in films such as Man on the Moon (1999), by Milos Forman, or Awakening of the Mind (2004), by Michel Gondry, just to name a few.
After the premiere of the latest film Sonic the Hedgehog 2 (2022), Jim Carrey, now 60 years old, and 42 years of career, announced the withdrawal of cinema, stating that only a kind of miracle, and an unusual story, the will return to interpretation. For now, the actor is obsessively dedicated to painting and political cartoons.
He is one of the greatest actors of the last decades, responsible for several box office hits, especially for his chameleonic ability to physically “transform” himself into the characters he plays, as was evident in one of the first films, the famous The Mask (1994).
As a child actor and screenwriter, he already showed this innate talent for transfiguring himself and presenting different facial expressions. The more his mother asked him not to do it, the more Jim was fascinated by this characteristic, also motivated by his father, a man with the heart of a clown who had to subject himself to an ordinary job as a salesman to support the family. This aspect forever marked Jim Carrey's attitude towards his work that he always tried to do what made him happiest, even if it didn't bring him the greatest financial compensation.
Carrey began working on television series in 1980, and three years later made his film debut with Harvey Frost's The Sex and Violence Family Hour. Still in that decade, he participated in several films, among them Francis Ford Coppola's Peggy Sue Got Married. But it was in 1994, with three films that were big box-office hits: Peter and Bobby Farrelly's Crazy On The Loose, Tom Shadyac's Ace Ventura - Animal Detective (directors Carrey would work with several times), and Chuck Russell's The Mask, that his career exploded. He would appear in Joel Schumacher's Batman Forever, playing the character Riddler, and the following year he would make a sequel Ace Ventura and The Compulsive Liar (1997), again with Shadyac, with good critical reception and, again, a great public success. He then played another iconic character, Truman Burbank, in Peter Weir's The Truman Show (1998), for which he won a Golden Globe for Best Actor, a feat he would repeat with his interpretation of Andy Kaufman in Milos Forman's acclaimed Man on the Moon (1999).
In 2003, he made the comedy Bruce the Almighty, a new collaboration with Tom Shadyac, where Carrey plays the role of Bruce Nolan/Bruce the Almighty, which had a mixed critical reception, but was one of the highest-grossing and highest-grossing films of the year. This was followed by Michel Gondry's cult film, The Mind's Wake (2004), where he acts with Kate Winslet.
In recent years, he has published a children's book, How Roland Rolls, which was accompanied by an EP of original songs he worked on with his daughter Jane Carrey, and in between the premieres of Chris Smith's documentary Jim & Andy: The Great Beyond (Venice Film Festival, 2017) and Sonic - The Movie (2020), he has been working for television and painting.
A few years ago, during a conversation with Michael Moore at the Broadway show The Terms of My Surrender, Jim admitted the depression he suffered for years and how he dealt with it. "We're all afraid of the river of tears, and like everyone else, I avoided the problems with food, sex, noise and gadgets," he said on stage. But it was the fact that she finally faced the disease that allowed her to overcome it.
Today, with a 42-year career, Jim Carrey admits a weariness and disillusionment with Hollywood, and has been one of the most critical voices of the values and stances of the movie mecca. The possibility of leaving the movies was announced after the premiere of the new movie Sonic the Hedgehog 2 (2022). "If the angels bring some kind of script written in gold ink that tells me it will be very important for people to see, I can stay on the path, but I'm taking a break. I really enjoy my quiet life, I love painting, and I love my spiritual life. I feel like I have enough. I've done enough. I am enough," the actor said in an interview with Access Hollywood.
Until then, you can still see him in a new Netflix special that pays tribute to host and comedian Bob Saget, where he will be side by side with Chris Rock, John Mayer, John Stamos and Jeff Ross.