Jim Carrey

Info

Full Name: James Eugene Carrey
Date of birth: January 17, 1962 (64 years old)
Location: Newmarket, Ontario
Country: Canada

Jim Carrey has been active for 36 years, participating in 36 movies that average a 6.7/10 score.

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Biography

On 26 February 2026, at the Olympia theatre in Paris, Jim Carrey went up to collect an honorary César and delivered the whole speech in French. He thanked his daughter Jane, his grandson Jackson, his partner and his father Percy, whom he called the funniest man he ever knew. The internet, rather than dwelling on any of that, spent a week arguing about whether the man on stage was really him or a stand in. The French academy had to point out that the visit had been booked since the summer.

That scene says a lot about his career: a Canadian who got rich pulling faces and has spent thirty years trying to be taken seriously.

He was born on 17 January 1962 in Newmarket, Ontario, the youngest of four. His father played in dance bands before settling into accountancy; his mother Kathleen was often ill, and he worked out early that making her laugh did more good than any medicine.

When his father lost his job the family lost their home. They lived in a Volkswagen van, and he and his brother spent a spell in a tent in an Ontario park. Both went to work as janitors at the Titan Wheels tyre factory on eight hour night shifts, and at sixteen he dropped out of school.

He first stood up in front of a comedy audience at fifteen, at the Yuk Yuk's club in Toronto, and died on stage so badly that it took him two years to try again. By 1982 he was filling Massey Hall, doing an act built almost entirely on impressions. He moved to Los Angeles in 1983 and was on Johnny Carson's show by November of that year.

His real training ground was 'In Living Color', the Fox sketch series he worked on from 1990 to 1994, where he built a reputation for impersonating anyone. He had already turned up in films without leaving a mark, including the rock singer who dies in 'The Dead Pool' (1988), one of the Dirty Harry pictures.

1994, the year that changed everything

In twelve months he went from television support to global star. 'Ace Ventura: Pet Detective', for which he was paid 350,000 dollars, was followed by 'The Mask', which went past 350 million worldwide, and 'Dumb and Dumber' with Jeff Daniels.

The following year brought a blockbuster villain: the Riddler in 'Batman Forever' (1995), the Joel Schumacher entry in which he shared the villainy with Tommy Lee Jones. He also went back to the detective in 'Ace Ventura: When Nature Calls'.

His next contract made industry history: 20 million dollars for 'The Cable Guy' (1996), directed by Ben Stiller. He was the first comic actor paid that much up front, and 'Liar Liar' (1997) proved the formula still worked at the box office.

Truman, Kaufman and two Golden Globes

The turn came with 'The Truman Show' (1998), in which Peter Weir had him play a man who works out that his entire life is a television programme, with Laura Linney and Ed Harris. He won the Golden Globe for best actor in a drama and the film became one of the most quoted of the nineties.

He won again a year later for 'Man on the Moon' (1999), the Milos Forman film about the comedian Andy Kaufman. He stayed in character on that shoot in a way that unsettled half the crew, never dropping it between takes. The footage recorded at the time surfaced much later in the documentary 'Jim & Andy: The Great Beyond' (2017), which is a queasy watch.

Two Golden Globes in a row for dramatic work would normally lead somewhere. It never did: the Academy has never nominated him for an Oscar, not for Truman, not for Kaufman, not for anything since.

The Grinch, God and erased memories

He opened the 2000s with two very different hits: the green monster of 'How the Grinch Stole Christmas' (2000), a part that meant hours of prosthetics every day and which he has described as torture, and the split personality of 'Me, Myself & Irene' (2000).

He then tried straight drama without a safety net in 'The Majestic' (2001), which flopped, and went back to safer ground with 'Bruce Almighty' (2003), where he takes divine powers off Morgan Freeman and puts up with Jennifer Aniston. It remains one of the biggest hits of his career, and it later produced a spin off sequel that he sat out entirely.

In 2004 came the film critics still put first. In 'Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind', written by Charlie Kaufman and directed by Michel Gondry, he is a sad man who decides to have his ex girlfriend, played by Kate Winslet, wiped from his memory. There is not a single unnecessary gurn in it.

The rest of the decade mixed studio jobs with oddities: Count Olaf in 'Lemony Snicket's A Series of Unfortunate Events' (2004) with Meryl Streep, the thriller 'The Number 23' (2007), the comedy 'Yes Man' (2008) with Zooey Deschanel, and the lovestruck conman of 'I Love You Phillip Morris' (2009) with Ewan McGregor, a film that struggled even to find an American distributor.

He also spent that stretch inside motion capture suits. In Robert Zemeckis's 'A Christmas Carol' (2009) he plays Dickens's Scrooge at three ages plus all three ghosts, and he had already voiced the elephant in 'Horton Hears a Who!' (2008).

The following years filled up with lower profile work, among it 'Mr. Popper's Penguins' (2011), the television magician of 'The Incredible Burt Wonderstone' (2013) and a reunion with Jeff Daniels twenty years on in 'Dumb and Dumber To' (2014).

In 2013 he did something unusual. He shot 'Kick-Ass 2' and then, months later and after the Sandy Hook shooting, said publicly that he could not support the film's level of violence and refused to promote it.

Robotnik and the retirement that never happened

His return to television was 'Kidding' (2018), the Showtime series in which he played a children's presenter falling apart after the death of a son. It ran two seasons, Gondry directed a good part of it, and it brought him a seventh Golden Globe nomination.

Then came the character that has introduced him to a whole generation of children: Doctor Robotnik in 'Sonic the Hedgehog' (2020), with sequels in '2022' and '2024'. No other role has brought him back this often.

In April 2022 he told an interviewer that he was probably done: "I have enough. I've done enough. I am enough." He added that he would come back for a script written in gold ink. He came back for Sonic instead, and by 2024 he was calling it a long rest rather than a retirement.

The fourth film shot in the first half of 2026, has already wrapped and reaches cinemas in March 2027, with Keanu Reeves back as Shadow and Ben Kingsley and Nick Offerman joining the cast.

Painting, books and a life lived in public

He has painted almost daily for about fifteen years. He has shown the work, published political cartoons during Trump's first term and, in 2020, wrote a half fiction half memoir novel with Dana Vachon, 'Memoirs and Misinformation', which takes his own public image apart. Before that came a children's book, 'How Roland Rolls' (2013).

His private life has often got ahead of him. He married the actress Melissa Womer in 1987 and they divorced in 1995; their daughter Jane was born from that marriage. He was married to Lauren Holly for less than a year, between 1996 and 1997, was engaged to Renée Zellweger in 2000 and spent five years with Jenny McCarthy.

In September 2015 his former partner Cathriona White died, and he spent years tied up in litigation over her death that was eventually dropped. He has also talked openly, and without dressing it up, about the depression he has lived with for decades.

He has been a grandfather since 2010, when Jane had Jackson, and since 2022 he has been with Min Ah, the woman he called "my sublime companion" from the Olympia stage. At 64 he works when he feels like it, paints the rest of the time and stands as proof that you can collect a lifetime award without ever having walked the Oscars carpet as a nominee.