{"id":113806,"date":"2025-05-19T07:49:10","date_gmt":"2025-05-19T07:49:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/113806\/"},"modified":"2025-05-19T07:49:10","modified_gmt":"2025-05-19T07:49:10","slug":"the-role-that-sent-jim-carrey-to-the-brink-of-madness","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/113806\/","title":{"rendered":"The role that sent Jim Carrey to the brink of madness"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Jim<\/p>\n

(Credits: Far Out \/ YouTube Still)<\/p>\n

Sun 18 May 2025 22:30, UK <\/p>\n

Jim Carrey<\/a> is often described as a one-of-a-kind, larger-than-life performer. Watch any of his movies, and you\u2019re likely to forget the names, faces, and characters of everyone else on screen. His kinetic performances take up all the oxygen in the room \u2013 and if you\u2019re a fan, that\u2019s exactly how it should be. Even if you\u2019re not, there\u2019s no denying he\u2019s a comedic genius. His timing, physicality, and uncanny talent for impressions have made him one of the most successful actors of the last few decades.<\/p>\n

Given how idiosyncratic Carrey is, you might assume that he is always playing himself, but on at least one occasion, he delved so deeply into the character of a real-life person that he lost himself entirely. Directed by Milo\u0161 Forman and released in 1999, Man on the Moon is a biopic of the late comedian Andy Kaufman, who became famous as a guest star on the first season of Saturday Night Live and was most widely known for his portrayal of Latka Gravas in the sitcom Taxi. <\/p>\n

Kaufman\u00a0was often called\u00a0an \u2018anti-comedian\u2019 because he didn\u2019t tell jokes and eschewed the usual format of comedy sketches. Instead, he used a constant bait-and-switch method\u00a0in which he would\u00a0do outlandish things and make the audience constantly question whether he was doing it in character or being himself. He was more of a performance artist than a comedian, and even when he appeared to be breaking the fourth wall, he was always performing. No one, including himself, seemed to know who the real Andy Kaufman was.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Like many people, Carrey believed that Kaufman was a revelation, a groundbreaking performer of untold brilliance. But things got more complicated when he took on the task of portraying him in a movie. \u201cWhen I heard I had the part, I was looking at the ocean,\u201d Carrey remembered. \u201cAnd that\u2019s the moment when Andy came back to make his movie. What happened after was out of my control.\u201d<\/p>\n

What happened on the\u00a0set of\u00a0Man on the Moon\u00a0is one of the most infamous instances of method acting in cinematic history.\u00a0Forget about Jared Leto\u2019s most\u00a0wanky forays into self-indulgence<\/a>; Carrey is unbeatable. Not only did he remain in character on and off set, but he seemed\u00a0to completely lose touch with reality. Imagine trying to embody a person\u00a0who was\u00a0constantly slipping and sliding into provocative, disruptive, occasionally dangerous alter-egos whose sole purpose was to be agents of chaos.\u00a0<\/p>\n

It\u2019s unclear how Carrey felt about the whole thing. In the 2017 documentary about the making of\u00a0Man on the Moon,\u00a0Jim & Andy: The Great Beyond, the star talks extensively about the experience, but he was so deeply immersed in the character that he has little insight into his actions beyond the feeling that they were not, in fact, his own. <\/p>\n

\u201cThis crazy melodrama started happening all over the place,\u201d he said, as if he were not the genesis of it all.\u00a0<\/p>\n

He tormented crew members with deafening music, attacked cast members, snuck into Steven Spielberg\u2019s office on the Universal lot, and crashed a car, all while insisting that he be called \u2018Andy.\u2019 It\u2019s no wonder that the studio withheld all the behind-the-scenes footage for nearly 20 years. As Carrey said, \u201cThey didn\u2019t want people to think I was an asshole.\u201d <\/p>\n

It took time for the actor to recover from himself, or, in his mind, return to himself. \u201cWhen the movie was over,\u201d he said. \u201cI couldn\u2019t remember who I was anymore\u201d. He\u00a0retreated\u00a0to comedies for a while, delving back into his very particular brand of\u00a0humour\u00a0with\u00a0Me, Myself & Irene\u00a0and\u00a0How the Grinch Stole Christmas. When he did return to serious drama in the movie\u00a0Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, it was probably for the best that he wasn\u2019t inhabiting a real person.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

Related Topics<\/p>\n

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