The comedy actors Jim Carrey was amazed by: “It’s like a who’s who”
Having been a comedy performer for over 45 years and a Hollywood star for 30 of them, Jim Carrey is well-versed in what it takes to succeed in the ruthless world of silver screen laughs.
Sometimes, the best stand-up comics in the business don’t have what it takes to carve out a successful cinema career, just like there are many major names in screen comedy who’ve never performed in front of a live audience in their lives.
Carrey has experienced the highs and lows of both after being rejected multiple times from Saturday Night Live before he finally caught his big break as a cast member on the sketch comedy series In Living Color Several years later, he became a household name as the headline attraction of three quickfire box office smash hits.
What made Carrey stand out from the pack was that nobody else was doing what he did, not that anybody could have pulled it off if they had tried. Taking classic slapstick and his background as an impressionist and twisting it into something unmistakably his own, the gurning funnyman emerged as one of the biggest draws and most bankable actors in the business.
He even diversified by revealing himself to be a supremely talented dramatic performer, with that drive and determination solidified by a tough upbringing. No two journeys are the same, though, and when Carrey revelled in the joy being brought to audiences by the generation that followed in his wake, one of them stood out just because they were even more of a veteran than he was.
“I do watch other people like Steve Carell, and I can sit back and go, ‘Wow man, that guy is good,'” Carrey told Movies of his co-star in Bruce Almighty and flop magical comedy The Incredible Burt Wonderstone. They also collaborated on the 2008 animation Horton Hears a Who!, which drafted in “a who’s who of comedy across five generations.”
“Seth Rogen, Jonah Hill, Carol Burnett, they amaze me,” Carrey continued. “I sit and watch Knocked Up and go, ‘Wow, that is great work man’. These guys are doing incredible stuff. I wish I could be them. It’s all your perspective.” It’s probably unnecessary to point towards the odd one out, but whereas Rogen and Hill made their screen debuts in 1999 and 2004, respectively, Burnett’s came in 1955, and she was a legend long before the other two had even been born.
That doesn’t make them any more or less qualified to blow Carrey’s socks off, though, and having been around the block a few times himself and regularly voiced his disillusions with the industry that made him famous, being mentioned in that select group of names who instil him with a genuine sense of amazement is praise in itself.
