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By Chris Nashawaty
Chris Nashawaty
Chris Nashawaty
Chris Nashawaty is a senior writer for EW, and author of EW.com's DVD Insomniac column

Give it to me, baby...Uh-huh! Uh-huh!...Give it to me, baby!''

Speeding like a crazed banshee down Santa Monica Boulevard, Jim Carrey is howling along to every song on the radio. Right now it's the Offspring's ''Pretty Fly (For a White Guy).'' But no matter what's thrown at him, he handles the entire Top 40 word for word, as if he had nothing better to do than sit around all day in his underwear watching MTV.

''Uno, dos, tres, cuatro, cinco, cinco, seis.... And all the girls say I'm pretty fly for a white guy!''

Zigzagging his black Mercedes convertible from lane to lane, Carrey is all over the place. And it's not just in the way he drives, or the way he squirms, twists, and shimmies while performing his lead-foot karaoke. He's literally all over the place: Every block another billboard, bus stop, or phone booth has his bigger-than-life puss plastered on it, hyping his new movie Me, Myself & Irene.

''Look at me. God, I'm everywhere!'' Carrey actually seems slightly weirded out and embarrassed by his omnipresence. At a red light, the 38-year-old actor slides his tiny, blue-tinted shades down the bridge of his nose to get a nice, long look at one of the billboards that has him sneering as ''Hank'' -- the aggressively nasty, alpha-monkey alter ego of his good-natured, weak-willed highway patrolman in Peter and Bobby Farrelly's split-personality comedy. Pointing to his 50-foot-high doppelganger, the actor deadpans, ''That's the real me...Hank.''

Switching his mood as quickly as the traffic light turns green, Carrey downshifts into one of many unexpected moments of introspection. ''It's amazing, a lot of my characters in the last couple of years have dealt with duality,'' he says. ''My movies are like therapy sessions -- they never fail to be in the pocket of where I am and what I need. With Irene, I was going through a lot of 'Is it okay to be who I am?' I can smile my way through life if I want to, but I don't want to. And will I be accepted if I show the dark side a little?''

To some degree, Carrey's concerns about mainstream acceptance haven't been just his concerns. Ever since he chose to star in the back-to-back dramatic departures The Truman Show and Man on the Moon, some of Carrey's fans have been scratching their heads, wondering why he'd abandoned the lowbrow comedies that vaulted him to fame to become ''Jim Carrey: Serious Actor.''

Of course, most of this has been blown wildly out of proportion -- as if it were an unholy betrayal for the guy to stretch. But those same people who place so much significance on Carrey's career choices may see Me, Myself & Irene as some sort of ''We told you so'' surrender: He couldn't cut it with the Academy, so now he's talking out of his butt again. When that possible perception is brought up, Carrey explodes with laughter. ''That's a good angle, let's go with that one: 'But this time he has a trumpet!''' He adds, ''The hardest part about [not getting an Oscar nomination] was people's assumptions that you were destroyed in some way. I mean, I saw tabloid stories that said Renee had to talk me into coming out of the house afterwards because I was so bummed out, or that she hired clown strippers to cheer me up.''


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