Carrey's the first to admit there's a side of him that was disappointed that Man on the Moon didn't connect with more people. But another, more Zen-master side says that rather than worry about how others view his career ebbs and flows, it ultimately doesn't mean squat because Jim Carrey's at peace with Jim Carrey — not to mention happily in love with his Irene costar Renee Zellweger. More than anything, though, Carrey wants you to know that if this isn't exactly what you'd like to hear right now, then you need to go peddle your pathology somewhere else, pal. Because you're the one in pain.
By now, the first stage of Jim Carrey's worldwide will to power has been well chronicled: Canadian stand-up toils in two-drink-minimum obscurity until finally scoring a smattering of small movie roles (Peggy Sue Got Married, Earth Girls Are Easy); struggling actor lands a gig on TV's In Living Color and steals skits with his unhinged physical gymnastics and verbal kung fu; TV star parlays his human-tornado shtick into the box office sleeper smash Ace Ventura: Pet Detective, and deftly follows it up with a string of give-the-people-what-they-want blockbusters: The Mask, Dumb and Dumber, and Ace Ventura: When Nature Calls.
But when The Cable Guy, a darker, more acid-tinged comedy, hit theaters in 1996, Carrey (who was now pulling in a record $20 million per picture) seemed to take a critical spanking somewhat disproportionate to the quality of the film on screen. ''I was a marked man at that point,'' says Carrey. ''I'd had a lot of success and then the $20 million tag went on that and it was just...I was set up for that one. It was my turn. But I was ready for that: 'It's my turn, cool, whatever.' I've never had the sense that I'm owed anything.''
Clad in beat-up jeans, a gray Rhode Island State Police T-shirt, and brand-spankin'-new Nike running shoes, Carrey sits in his Pit Bull Productions office. Just down the street from his home in the Brentwood section of Los Angeles, Carrey's laid-back business lair gives off the vibe of a casual Friday in Willy Wonka's chocolate factory — minus the Oompa-Loompas. Kiddie toys and Maskaction figures are perched on his desk next to two of his eight golden popcorn MTV Movie Awards. Ostensibly, we're here to discuss Me, Myself & Irene. But like the guy you see in his movies, Carrey can be as slippery as quicksilver when it comes to conversational segues. When asked why it sounded like a good idea to go from the offbeat poignancy of an Andy Kaufman biopic to the vulgar slapstick of a Farrelly farce, Carrey says simply, ''This was back to not caring....'' Breaking into a huge grin, he adds, ''Although at this point people expect me to put my hand up my own a-- and turn myself inside out in these movies. Or play double Dutch with my colon.''
Carrey cops to reports that he went a tad loco while making Man on the Moon. In fact, he was so wrapped up in his character that he wouldn't even respond to his own name. ''People were never instructed to call me 'Andy,' but they'd never get an answer if they called for 'Jim,''' he says. ''I was so deep into it that it was scary for a lot of people around me.'' Carrey says it took an entire month after the film wrapped just to exorcise the Andyisms from his system. ''By all accounts, including his own, he'd gone a little nuts,'' says Irene cowriter-director Peter Farrelly. ''So when we hooked up with Jim on Me, Myself & Irene, the first thing we said was, 'Jim, you should approach this job as a vacation because you're not going to live very long if you keep becoming these characters. Just have fun on this one.'''
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