“In certain ways, I probably am him”: Why Howard Hughes is the greatest role Jim Carrey never played
Now that he’s into his sixth decade and basically retired outside of the Sonic the Hedgehog franchise, it can be confidently stated that Jim Carrey will be ending his career without an Academy Award nomination. But there’s a distinct possibility that he’d have won ‘Best Actor’ had the greatest role he never played not slipped through his fingers.
It’s one of the biggest snubs in modern Oscars history that Carrey didn’t even make the shortlist for The Truman Show despite winning the Golden Globe for ‘Best Actor in a Motion Picture – Drama’, and in a roundabout way, it’s Martin Scorsese’s fault that he never got the opportunity to play Howard Hughes under the direction of Christopher Nolan.
Whereas Scorsese’s The Aviator was a great old-fashioned biopic that won five Oscars from 11 nominations, it wasn’t a passion project. The director only stepped in to helm the film after Michael Mann dropped out of the running, by which point Leonardo DiCaprio was already signed on to lead the cast. Nolan, on the other hand, had spent years researching and writing what he called “the best script I’ve ever written.”
The filmmaker said Carrey “was born to play” Hughes, and the actor was of a very similar mind. In a fateful conversation with Film Threat, given what happened, the comedy superstar was quizzed on the status of the project in late 2001, where he said “I can’t really speak about it very much because it’s a jinx.”
However, he did offer an insight into how he would play the part, and in doing so he not only alluded to his own off-camera eccentricities, but invoked one of the greatest movies ever made. “In certain ways, I probably am him. I identify with certain things,” he explained. “I want to find out what made him go where he went. I want to find out what his hole was. What his chasm was that needed to be filled that never could be.”
“It’s Citizen Kane to me with characters. It’s what are they missing, what are they trying to fill up with their behaviour. It’s ‘rosebud.’ Everybody is trying to find ‘rosebud’, the thing they are missing but it’s in the fire,” Carrey continued. “You have to let it go. It’s amazing. The people who don’t let that go and realize they are never going to get that don’t go on, they don’t grow up.”
Nolan has confirmed that the writing process for his abandoned Hughes biopic played directly into Oppenheimer, which won seven Oscars including, ‘Best Picture’, ‘Best Director’, and ‘Best Actor’. It might sound presumptive to assume so, but there’s no reason why his unrealised collaboration with Carrey wouldn’t have gotten him there two decades sooner.
After all, The Aviator was nominated in those very same categories, and that was directed by one of the best in the business with a powerhouse dramatic turn front-and-centre. Swap Scorsese and DiCaprio for Nolan and Carrey – both of whom were clearly more invested in the subject on a personal level – and their movie could have realistically gone above and beyond to sweep the board.
