Peter Sellers, the comedian Jim Carrey called “one of my favourites”
His outlandish form of comedy might not be for everyone, but there is no denying that Jim Carrey is excellent at what he does. Although his career certainly slowed down before he recently revealed his desire to quit Hollywood and become an artist, it seemed like an inauspicious end to a career that brought immense success.
Carrey is closely associated with a rubbery face that can pull expressions impossible to the ordinary human and a series of absurd comedies such as Ace Ventura: Pet Detective, The Mask, and Dumb and Dumber, all of which arrived in 1994. This link to the period’s ridiculous comedic proclivities has overshadowed the fact that he’s also an accomplished dramatist.
For every moment that Jim Carrey made us laugh as spaghetti-stained kids, he also provided instances of genuine philosophical profundity. Clearly not just the court jester, some of these performances stand among the best of their era. Yes, he’s had his dramatic misfires, such as the comically bad The Number 23. Still, his portrayals of the human guinea pig Truman Burbank in The Truman Show and the revered comic Andy Kaufman in Man on the Moon go a long way toward offsetting his more cringe-inducing instances.
There’s also 2004’s Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, the utterly depressing romantic drama starring Carrey and Kate Winslet, to which nearly every heartbroken young soul has shed at least a couple of tears. Even Bruce Almighty, one of the previous year’s most successful films at the box office, has its weighty moments.
A much more complex character than your average Hollywood star, it’s no surprise that some people just don’t get Jim Carrey, especially in an age where the limits of comedic expression are being squeezed. In 2001, he presciently predicted his work going out of fashion, saying, “I hope I can be brave about ageing and dignified about it because so much of this business is trying to hang on to something rather than be who you are.”
As he honed his famous style in the early 1990s in the sketch show In Living Color, it makes sense that Carrey emerges from a no longer standard realm. He revealed this when discussing the comparisons people had made between him and the great British comic Peter Sellers following his performance in 2004’s black comedy Lemony Snicket’s A Series of Unfortunate Events. Playing the evil Count Olaf in the flick, his contorted facial expressions and humourous voices were straight out of the Sellers’ handbook, as seen in Dr Strangelove, The Pink Panther Series, and the original Casino Royale.
Outlining how it felt to be compared to one of his heroes in a BBC interview, Carrey said: “It’s obviously pretty lofty; he was one of my favourites. But I just saw The Life And Death Of Peter Sellers, and I hope I’m not compared to him in every way. Stomping on the children’s toys was pretty heavy. I guess it’s because I was playing multiple roles in Lemony Snicket, but I always tried to keep in mind that I was Count Olaf the whole time.”
Naturally, most significant artists covet originality more than anything, but being compared to the greats only supplements confidence in their craft. There’s no doubt Carrey was enthralled by being touted as the second coming of the late British comic. Such a career-affirming parallel was surely at the back of his mind when dreaming of retirement.
