I am about halfway through my interview with Jim Carrey when the actor’s face
tightens, he leans sharply forward, and he demands: “Can you tell me who
built the Great Pyramid of Giza? Which pharaoh, I mean?”
The 45-year-old actor, dressed today in catburglar black, fixes me with a look
of almost childlike inquisitiveness. It’s then that I notice that his face
seems to belong to a different person from his hair, which falls long and
lank towards his shoulders. His face seems older, thinner — sadder — than
the hair. In fact, if you’d never met Carrey before, you’d barely think he
was capable of a joke, never mind some of the greatest comic turns in recent
Hollywood history.
That said, he’s a likeable presence, regardless of the recent bad press:
faultlessly polite, downbeat but not surly. It’s his subconscious that
causes the problems: it’s like a firehose, blasting out theories and ideas
at maximum pressure. Hence his urgent inquiry about the Great Pyramid.
I tell Carrey that I have no idea who built it. “Right,” he says,
victoriously. “It’s the greatest monument that’s ever been built, the
greatest human structure ever built — and you don’t know who built it, a
mere 2,000 years later! My point is: whoever built it did not achieve
personal greatness.”
Greatness is clearly much on Carrey’s mind these days. With his latest
project, The Number 23 , soon to arrive in cinemas, there are some
who believe that his days as Hollywood’s $20 million man are over. His most
recent blockbuster projects — Used Guys and Ripley’s Believe
It or Not! — have both stalled in production, movie studios are
panicking about budget and salary inflation, and Carrey recently fired Nick
Stevens, his agent of 15 years, for whom he once bought a new Porsche.
That, along with his interest in more serious acting roles, concern over his
gaunt appearance and mental health (he urinated on the set of The Number
23 during one scene, the footage of which was unusable), have added up
to a rough few months for Carrey. This, after all, is a man so ambitious
that he once sat on a patch of dirt off Mulholland Drive and wrote himself
an undated cheque for $10 million. He was penniless at the time. A few years
later, after being paid $10 million, he cashed it.
Carrey arrived at the epiphany about the Great Pyramid of Giza via the
Macedonian conqueror Alexander the Great, the subject of a documentary the
actor had just watched. Carrey saw a bit of himself in the military tyrant,
and concluded that unlimited success in any field is pointless because,
ultimately, who’s going to care? If this strikes you as slightly messianic —
the logical extension being that Carrey believes he must compete with Jesus
for career endurance — then, well, welcome to Hollywood. “People talk about
egos being out of control, but actually what [unlimited success] is, it’s
the ego being in control, the illusion that you're going to be known
forever,” he explains.
In other words, Carrey has realised thathis roles in The Mask, How The
Grinch Stole Christmas and Bruce Almighty won’t spare him from
the fate of any mere mortal. “So,” says Carrey with a dark frown, “f***
Alexander the Great.”
Now that he has his private jet, his Saleen S7 car (the one Bruce Almighty got
when he became God) and his 400-acre ranch in Canada (“my little nudist
colony”), you get the feeling that Carrey desperately needs tochannel all
that insane energy into something else.
“Honestly, what I really want now is to be happy spiritually, at peace,” he
says. “What life is about now is understanding that none of the things I do
in showbusiness are my actual identity, that life’s a costume party, and
that, y’know, it should be fun, a form ofplay. So it’s about doing that in a
bunch of different areas.
“I started ice-skating again. I’m skating every week now, learning how to do
really fun stuff, and playing hockey. I’ve been doing a lot of paintings and
I’m writing a book. It’s just my thoughts on everything. It’s called Be
Ready to be OK .”
As of now, there is no publication date for Be Ready to be OK . For the
time being, fans will have to make do with The Number 23 , a movie
about one man’s obsession with, yes, the number 23. In fact, this is a
real-life phenomenon known as the 23 Enigma, followers of which claim that
the answer to the Universe somehow lies with those two digits: the Earth
spins on an axis of 23 degrees, for example, and the human genome contains
23 homologous pairs of chromosomes.
Carrey has long had an interest in the 23 Enigma, which is why he was so keen
to make the movie, directed by Joel Schumacher — who appears to have put an
end to Carrey’s off-camera drama while making an artsy yet populist film
that sits well alongside, say, The Truman Show . Amid the leftfield
concept and the Dennis Potterish stylisation lies a good old-fashioned
whodunnit.
Carrey’s real-life mental problems go much deeper than a number obsession,
however. “I’ve gone through periods when I couldn’t shut off the
conversations in my head,” he says. “That’s kind of a form of insanity, when
you can’t control it, when it’s taking over.
“But they’re not disembodied voices that I’m scared of hearing, or anything
like that — it’s just like I cast people who I know, who I’ve met, who I’ve
had moments with, as my [mental] adversaries. It’s just anger coming out.”
This thought triggers a defence of the Seinfeld actor Michael Richards,
and his recent racist tirade in an LA comedy club, captured on mobile phone
video and circulated on YouTube. “He doesn’t hate anybody, man,” says
Carrey, who knew Richards back when he was making his way from Canadian
nobody to Comedy Store regular. “I know that if there was an African
American fallen in the street, he would pick them up and help them out. He
was just super-superangry and bitter at that moment. When you’ve got a lot
of seething anger inside of you, and suddenly somebody triggers it, you pick
up the biggest rock you can find. It’s unfortunate that those people in the
audience had to hear that. But I look at it and go, y’know, it’s a hard
lesson, but [Richards] is going to learn a s***load about himself through
it, and it would be a drag if people wrote him off as a result of it.”
The speculation in Hollywood has long been that Carrey’s spiritual quest would
eventually move him in the direction of Scientology — especially given that
he and his girlfriend, the actress Jenny McCarthy, have been spending so
much time with the Cruises. Carrey, who has been married twice before and
was once engaged to Renée Zellweger, rules this out emphatically.
“I don’t think I’ll ever belong to an organisation, because organisations
corrupt,” he says. “It’s the natural course of things, when you have to
protect the organisation from outside influences, or when you’re trying to
change people’s minds. It’s tough when egos get involved and they’re trying
to bend the will of another person, ratherthan allowing them to come to it
if they see it.”
Carrey says he shares the belief of Scientologists that “people create their
own lives, that they’re responsible for their own lives”, but that seems to
be where the similarities end. “I know people who are Scientologists: good
people, fine people. I don’t know how much of it is controlling, and how
much of it is just being helpful for the sake of helping. I’ve heard things
about the pressure that can be exerted, but that’s true of a lot of
religions.”This is the point at which Carrey, via radical Muslims and the
Crusaders, gets on to Alexander the Great — and hence the Great Pyramid.
And that’s when you realise that he still cares more about success in
Hollywood than perhaps his spirituality allows him to say. “As far as movies
go, whether they’re funny or not funny, or both, I wanna make ones that are
a bit different, original, that give you something to chew on a few hours
afterwards,” he explains. “The ultimate dream would be for someone to leave
the theatre and say: ‘Something I saw in that movie makes me a little bit
different, a bit better, I can never be what I was before.’
“That would be fantastic, that’s the kind of thing I’d love to do.”
As for the answer to Carrey’s question, it was the Egyptian pharaoh Khufu who
built the Great Pyramid. In fact, many refer to it as “Khufu’s Pyramid”.
Maybe there’s hope for Jim Carrey’s greatness after all.
The Number 23 opens next Friday
Greetings Chris Ayres; according to our Egyptian records the Egyptian king who built Giza pyramids was "Suraeid," which means the Taurus; he was the grandson of the king that Egyptologists pronounce his name wrongly as Khufu. The talk of Jim Carrey imply that he shall produce a movie about him; but he should study him carefully. The number 23 is not a perfect number; thus, it does not refer to any cosmic Enigma.
Hossam Aboulfotouh, Cairo, Egypt
There's an unforgetable cartoon of Schultz's wherein one of the characters confesses some great fault to Lucy (might have been Charly Brown in the Lucy-as-psych series) and she answers "Five thousand years from now, who'll know the difference?" As you can see, I'm already beginning to forget it. Time is the great solvent.
Eugene Cappuccio, Heidelberg, germany
Then again, Google might just be the immortal memory. Behold ---- "In 1955-56, the Peanuts gang may have still been in first grade (or lower), but the characters continue to grow into their distinctive and unmistakable personalities. Snoopy overcomes some embarrassment to reveal his talent for impressions (wolf, rhino, alligator, kangaroo, Violet, etc.) and his joyous dance-the-day-away attitude. Linus adopts the same attitude ("Five hundred years from now, who'll know the difference?") and continues to show his genius in such diverse activities as square balloons, snow sculptures, and air sketches, even though he has to resort to wishful violence against his bullying sister.
Eugene Cappuccio, Heidelberg, germany
i like to see talented performers seek to be more than just personalities, to be on a quest for answers bigger than their own perceived stardom. I hope he finds the answers that make sense for him and give him peace of mind and contentment. And i agree wholeheartedly with his comments re: michael richards - I said the same thing to my wife. You get in a fight (which to Richards, that was a fight) you look to throw the heaviest punch you can. So he dropped the N-bomb. I too hope Michael isn't ostracised, but in our knee-jerk, labelling culture, it's unfortunate to understand that he most likely will be.
Patrick Mulvihill, Santa Monica, CA
I never thought he was funny and now it seems that he is nuts as well! He indulges himself as Red Skelton did years ago in the movies, and as did the so called 'national treasure' Norman Wisdom. The latest recruit to the manic scool of comedy is of course Lee Evans.They all seem to enjoy themselves so much, it is nauseating.
Tom Hunt, Leyburn, North Yorks, UK
Psychoanalysis via a single interview is a bit disturbing.
Perhaps the id is wishing for more information than is available for publication.
T manley, Madison, USA
Jim Carrey is a comedy hero to me, I just hope he has the common sense and intelligence to keep clear of that cult scientology. If he wants deeper spiritual understanding then he should become a buddhist or something along those lines. I consider Tom Cruise a pathetic and misguided creature.
Shaun , Hull,
Legend, Poor Guy though! When he says organisation he couldn't possibly mean the born again christian type? I know that they're not corrupt. They have something special man! Tom Cruise kind of needs to keep his scientology to himself lol. Or bin it!
Matthew Taylor, Horsham, UK