How Jim Carrey’s personal obsession became one of his worst-ever movies
Jim Carrey has been known to take things too far in preparation for his movies. Take his role as Andy Kaufman in Man on the Moon a the prime example. Carrey famously went method for the part, losing all sense of himself and effectively becoming the late comedian. He even met Kaufman’s real-life daughter and stayed in character as her deceased father. This remarkable delusion is famously chronicled in the Netflix documentary Jim & Andy: The Great Beyond.
This wasn’t the only time the Truman Show star went a little too deep, though. In 2007, Carrey reunited with his old Batman & Robin boss Joel Schumacher to make the psychological thriller The Number 23. Based on a real phenomenon surrounding the number, the movie is about a man who becomes obsessed with those digits, believing they hold some great significance in his life, and spirals out of control as a result.
Speaking with Indie London, Carrey detailed how he, too, lost himself to the idea that 23 held some mystical properties. “A friend of mine said one day, maybe 15 years ago, I see 23 everywhere,” he recalled. “When I said ‘what?’ he started pointing it out to me – licence plates added up to it, people’s birthdays and significant dates in history all added up to 23.”
Examples given by the actor included that the Hiroshima bomb was dropped at 8:15 (8+15=23) and that there are 46 chromosomes in the human body, 23 from each parent. Carrey even changed the name of his production company to JC23 after becoming convinced that it was important, so when a script all about it turned up on his desk, he simply had to bite. “It was really compelling the way they came up with all the different things,” he said of Fernley Phillips’ screenplay. “I then gave it to a friend of mine to read and he finished it in about an hour and a half and when I walked back in the room he had it open at page 23 and was circling every 23rd word to see if there was a code. And that’s what I want to do to the audience.”
Sadly, viewers didn’t share Carrey’s enthusiasm. The film picked up some seriously scathing reviews and is left in the lower echelons of Carrey’s filmography. Carrey’s performance, though earnest, is an odd fit. Renowned for his elastic comedic brilliance, his turn as Walter occasionally feels stilted, as if he’s grappling to find his footing in the film’s grim landscape. Still, moments of vulnerability shine through, hinting at a depth the script fails to fully exploit.
Despite all the bad press, The Number 23 made about $77million at the box office, a neat return on its $30m budget. It also found a fan in a famous name – Jim Carrey. “I was able to explore the darker edges of my personality,” the star said. “Which really was a blast and something different for me.”
Carrey was also able to find some personal inspiration in among his 23 possession, with a little help from our Lord and Saviour. “It finished up with me talking to a friend who was a minister and he had a book in his pocket that he pulled out and handed to me,” he told Indie London. “It was the 23rd Psalm. That’s ‘The Lord Is My Shepherd and I shall not want’. It’s all about living without fear and knowing that you’re taken care of. So that became my motto and I go to it all the time.”
