The band Jim Carrey refused to work with: “I tried to figure out what the hell I am”
Famous actors appear in music videos all the time. Everyone remembers Christopher Walken in Fatboy Slim’s ‘Weapon of Choice,’ Robert Downey Jr in Elton John’s ‘I Want Love,’ and Scarlett Johansson in Justin Timberlake’s ‘What Goes Around…Comes Around,’ for example. When Jim Carrey was offered the opportunity to star in the video for a song that topped the Billboard Adult Alternative Songs chart, though, he flat-out refused even to consider it. Did he dislike the band? Or was there something much deeper going on?
In 1998, Carrey was on top of the world. After breaking out with Ace Ventura: Pet Detective in 1993, he made eight movies that averaged an enormous $240million at the worldwide box office. This was one of the most successful runs any actor had ever experienced in Hollywood, and it included bona fide beloved movies like The Mask, Dumb and Dumber, The Truman Show, and Liar Liar. Heck, even The Cable Guy, which was criticised for being too dark and mean for Carrey’s audience, made $102million.
In the winter of that year, though, Carrey took his biggest creative risk yet – and it would ultimately exact a huge toll on his mental health. He began shooting Man on the Moon, a biopic of the legendary comedian Andy Kaufman, and even though he won a Golden Globe for his performance, questions were asked about the stories of his intense commitment to method acting while shooting the movie. In fact, the stories were so peculiar and troubling that a documentary was eventually released in 2017 entitled Jim & Andy: The Great Beyond. It revealed the true psychological toll Carrey’s process took on the cast, crew, and most of all, himself.
“Jim Carrey didn’t exist at that time,” Carrey admitted in 2017. “The true author of the project is Andy, and his genius – the fact that he committed so completely to what he did, really made that possible and made it essential for me to lose myself. I don’t feel like I made the film at all. I feel like Andy made the film.”
Carrey never once broke character on-set in order to achieve full immersion in Kaufman’s skin. It led to bizarre scenarios like Carrey harassing pro-wrestler Jerry ‘The King’ Lawler just like the real Kaufman had done, trapping co-star Danny DeVito in his trailer while portraying Kaufman’s mischievous alter-ego Tony Clifton, and engaging in a two-hour conversation with Ron Howard about Carrey’s next film, How the Grinch Stole Christmas as Kaufman, not himself.
Naturally, this behaviour made the shoot incredibly difficult for a lot of people, and Carrey later confessed, “It was psychotic.” Perhaps he realised he had gone too far while inhabiting Kaufman’s psyche, so Carrey felt he needed to put as much distance between himself and Kaufman as possible when the movie wrapped. This is why Carrey wanted to run a thousand miles in the other direction when he was approached about playing Kaufman again for the REM music video ‘The Great Beyond,’ which was on the film’s soundtrack.
“At that time, I just didn’t want to be Andy anymore, and they wanted me to be Andy in the video, and I just didn’t want to go back,” Carrey admitted in Jim & Andy. “Once I left Andy, and I tried to figure out what the hell I am again, I just didn’t want to go back and be Andy anymore.”
In truth, though, Carrey didn’t just hate the idea of stepping back into Kaufman’s shoes; he’d become so untethered from himself while playing the bizarre comedian that he needed to rediscover his own identity. “I didn’t know who I was anymore, when the movie was over,” he explained. “I didn’t know what my politics were. I couldn’t remember what I was about.”
The Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind star was also conflicted, though, because – to an extent – he had enjoyed pretending to be someone else for so long. He realised that, while playing Kaufman, he’d been able to take a break from the depression that had always plagued him. As soon as he returned to being himself, though, all those dark thoughts came back.
“Suddenly, I was so unhappy, and I realised I was back in my problems,” Carrey admitted. “I was back in my heartbreak. And suddenly, I thought to myself, ‘You felt so good when you were being Andy because you were free from yourself. You were on vacation from Jim Carrey.”
