The crucial advice Jim Carrey offered aspiring comedic actors: “Have faith”
It’s easy to say that Jim Carrey was something of an overnight sensation in Hollywood. However, by the time he finally made it big, he was already in his 30s, and he had more than a decade of experience as a professional actor and comedian under his belt.
After suffering the ignominy of being rejected by Saturday Night Live in the early 1980s, Carrey began honing his routines as he evolved from being a mere impressionist into a comedic all-rounder, which gradually gained him more notice on the stand-up circuit throughout the rest of the decade.
Bit-part roles and supporting parts in various films followed, but his first time as a leading man in 1985’s vampiric teen comedy Once Bitten hardly set him on the road to superstardom. Instead, it was the small screen that saw him put his rubber-faced histrionics to good use, with Carrey starring in sketch show In Living Color for five seasons and 125 episodes.
The final instalment in the Keenen Ivory Wayans-created favourite aired in May 1994, by which time Carrey was already well on his way to the top after Ace Ventura: Pet Detective had hit cinemas three months previously and gone on to earn over $100million at the global box office.
The Mask and Dumb and Dumber were released before the year was out, and just like that, he was an A-lister. Of course, it wasn’t quite so easy, but Carrey was nonetheless happy to dish out pivotal advice for any aspiring comedic actors who were seeking to follow in his footsteps to make the arduous journey from dingy and dimly lit clubs and backrooms to the very summit of the industry.
This being Carrey, though, he couldn’t help but kick off with a gag when the BBC asked him if there were any words of wisdom he wanted to disperse. “Stay out of my way,” he offered. “Don’t get any parts that I want – I will track you down!”
Taking things in a more serious direction, the two-time Golden Globe winner singled out perseverance as being key. “I honestly believe that the most important thing is to believe, to have faith,” Carrey said. “There are times when you’re up against the wall in this business, where you think there’s no love, there’s no money, there’s very little that keeps you going except faith. I’ve always operated that way from the very beginning.”
Even when he was grinding away on the bottom rung of the ladder, Carrey always “visualised everything that happened” and carried “this weird kind of feeling that I could make it happen in a way”. It definitely happened, making his advice well worth listening to for any up-and-coming comic attempting to walk a similar path.
