Jim Carrey: The Un-natural

Here is Jim Carrey, telling youpretty much everything you need to know about Jim Carrey: "I just knew [from an early age] that I neededa lot of attention from a lot of people and I needed to prove to the world that I was magic. That was theunderlying factor in everything. It's the underlying reason why I do this."Don't a lot of actors saythings like this? They do. The difference is, Carrey means it. He really really means it.

In a Hollywood where there is rarely very much at stake anymore besides money,Carrey's quixotic quest for the best that Hollywood stardom has to offer is the most interesting high-wire actaround--maybe even the only one around, at present. His career as a topline star commenced in 1994 with AceVentura: Pet Detective, an unusually apt vehicle in that Carrey was allowed to take what started as a fairlystraight B-picture (think Jim Belushi and K-9) and turn it into a farce on the strength of his manic muggingand ad-libbing. Two things were immediately evident: He could do physical comedy like no one else ingenerations, and he'd stand on your throat to get your attention.

But it was more than attention Carrey meant to command. He wanted love, adulation,respect--whatever you had. It's hard to think of another male actor quite so needy. He's practically anY-chromosome version of Marilyn Monroe. And Carrey was nothing if not likeable. His comedy contained nothingof its era's defining cynicism, which was less a creative decision than a reflection of the fact that JimCarrey is not wired to understand cynicism. Cynics stand outside. Carrey wanted in. His metier was not thesmirk but the full-bore anarchic grin that only grew wider the harder he chomped on the scenery. There was nomalice and no condescension in anything he did, just a gleeful sense of the untapped absurdities lurking inevery scene.

But there was an undercurrent of menace, too, without which the rapid-fire gags wouldhave worn out pretty quickly. If Carrey seemed a little like a stray dog that licks your hand and follows youhome, you always half-expected this particular mutt to attack anyone who tried to leave the room while he wasdoing his tricks. Ben Stiller's The Cable Guy (1996) is Carrey's best performance, and his best movie, forexactly that reason. It was also his first box-office stiff. Nobody wanted a Carrey who wouldn't go home, whoheld on to your ankle and gnawed until he drew real blood. Nobody wanted a comedy that played fast and loosewith the kind of bottomless loneliness that turns its victims into dangerous people.

He followed The Cable Guy with two movies that represented much safer bets: the gloppy,wholesome Liar Liar (1997) and The Truman Show (1998), a concept movie of middling merits that posedconsiderably greater risks for director Peter Weir than for Carrey. It's tempting to suppose that Carrey madethem partly because he wanted no part of roles like The Cable Guy that put his rising star at risk, but it'snot so; the lead times of Hollywood productions being what they are, he was signed to both projects before TheCable Guy bombed.

The path his career has followed is the one dictated from the start by his aspirationsand the way he defines success. What a friend of mine lamented a couple of years back as the "Tom-Hanksification"of Carrey--the process of turning him into a latter-day Gary Cooper, a totem of idealism and uprightness--hasbeen in the cards all along. And each step of the way it has involved discarding a little more of what Carreydoes best in the pursuit of what he needs most.

I've always suspected that Carrey isn't as interested in acting as he lets on. Yes, hetakes pride in his craft, approaches it with diligence and usually intelligence, seems to enjoy the challengeof unraveling a character. That's not the point. What I mean is that it's all a means to an end--that he wantsto be a star and an idol much more than he wants to be an artist. That's a crucial difference. In the end JimCarrey needs to mainline adulation. He has to be loved for being Jim Carrey, not for anything he manages tocreate as an artist (hence all the painful, compulsive confessionalism in his interviews).

It leaves him little room to differentiate himself from the parts he plays (rememberall the bizarre tales of his transmogrifying into Andy Kauffman on the set of Man on the Moon), or converselyto differentiate the parts he plays from the way he wishes to be seen. And he wishes to be seen as someone whonever gives offense, is impossible not to like. Which leads inevitably enough to Opie Howard's shining,saccharine Grinch and the even greater depths of The Majestic, the execrable little post-WWII fable that'sbeing released to home video this month. They call it "Capra-esque," but Capra never made anythingthis treacly. Carrey does everything but lick the camera to pull you nearer, but it's a con. You know thereare plenty of things he's too afraid to show you. Even the Academy Award nominators, usually suckers forsimpering flattery, were repelled this time. But no matter. "Carrey has never been better," ravedRoger Ebert. The show must go on.

Don't bet that he's through, though. He's presently linked to three projects, and twoof them sound like stinkers--a God-for-a-day comedy called Bruce Almighty; a social drama called Children ofthe Dust Bowl that's sure to be Spielberg-ian in its middlebrow sentimentality; and a Howard Hughes biopicwith Memento director Christopher Nolan. After that he would probably run for president if he could. But as anative-born Canadian he can't, so he's stuck in the movies. Once he's Forrest-Gumped his way to an Oscar andsees how little it assuages him, it's hard telling what Carrey may do. He might even get interested in thework for its own sake. The Majestic is available on DVD beginning June 17.

Steve Perry is a columnist for TheRake where this piece first appeared.