The movie role Jim Carrey found “uncomfortable”
When it comes to American comedy heroes, Jim Carrey stands proud as one of the true legends of the field. Capable of delivering a combination of physical slapstick humour and on-the-fly witty one-liners, Carrey delivered countless energetic comic performances that established his reputation in the annals of the comedy greats.
His remarkable year of 1994, in which he starred in Ace Ventura: Pet Detective, The Mask and Dumber and Dumber, is perhaps one of the greatest moments in the history of American cinema, while further efforts in the likes of The Cable Guy, Liar Liar and Bruce Almighty proved that there were no limits to his comic genius.
While Carrey is indeed best known for his comedic roles, he has occasionally dipped his toes into the bath of dramatic acting too, most notably with his excellent turn in Michel Gondy’s 2004 romantic drama Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. Carrey’s success in the film might be put down to a previous romantic drama that he performed in, Frank Darabont’s 2001 film The Majestic.
In an interview with Film Threat, Carrey explained that the role made him get out of his comfort zone, meaning the comedic roles that he’d given in the 1990s. In the film, Carrey played a 1950s Hollywood screenwriter suspected of being a communist. After suffering amnesia following a road accident, he is taken in by the inhabitants of a small town who mistake him for a local MIA World War I soldier. “I’d say it’s the least controlled because generally, the other things I’ve done have been doing a lot of stuff to get attention and to affect something happening,” he said.
His performance in The Majestic was one in which he had to develop a level of trust with the director, and Carrey needed to know that he was giving a good performance, given his lack of dramatic experience. “It was very confronting and I was very uncomfortable with it a lot of the time,” Carrey admitted, giving clues as to his dramatic change in acting direction.
Darabont had seemingly given Carrey the reassurance he required despite the actor’s discomfort in the role. Carrey had been used to playing wacky characters, whereas his role in The Majestic asked him to confront his emotions in a different way for the first time. “I come from a world where you know basically you’re not doing anything unless you’re risking your life on the set,” he said, “and this was more about how does this person make you feel.”
The shoot saw Carrey occasionally instinctively dip into his comic history, but the direction of Darabont allowed the actor to “steer back” into dramatic focus. “To have a good director, somebody who’s going to go, ‘That’s good and it’s real, but it’s not this movie, that’s not the tone,’ that’s what they’re there for– as guidance,” Carrey noted.
Carrey had consulted his The Truman Show director for guidance, and Peter Weir told him to approach The Majestic in the very same way that he was sitting down to dinner with him, with an air of Jim Carrey the person, not Jim Carrey the comic performer. Carrey explained, “He said, ‘Jim, if you do anything in this movie, be who you are sitting here right now and let the camera come in and don’t try to make anything happen. Just be who you are and let the audience decide what to think of it.’”
The result was that Carrey threw himself out of his comfort zone, and while The Majestic was received only moderately from a critical perspective and performed poorly at the box office, it undoubtedly led to one of Carrey’s best-ever performances in the shape of Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind.
