The “dark, terribly painful moment” that led Jim Carrey to his worst-ever movie
Darkness often begets darkness, and many comedians have revealed themselves to be tortured souls when the spotlight isn’t shining directly on them, both of which are applicable to Jim Carrey.
He might be one of modern Hollywood’s most popular big-screen comics, who rocketed to the summit of the industry by headlining three face-pulling and slapstick-heavy movies within the space of nine months, but when he isn’t making people laugh, the star has always been a melancholic sort.
Carrey regularly veers into full-blown existential territory, offering bizarre diatribes claiming that he doesn’t exist, none of us really exist, and nothing really matters, but he’ll still bring himself back in from the cold to make three Sonic the Hedgehog films, replete with his signature comic schtick.
One of the worst pictures he’s ever appeared in, Joel Schumacher’s The Number 23, was born from the leading man’s own personal obsession with the titular number, while his method antics as Andy Kaufman and his many alter-egos in Man on the Moon didn’t sit well with all of his colleagues and co-stars.
However, it was a troubling incident in his personal life that led Carrey to director Alexandros Avranas’ 2016 crime drama, Dark Crimes, which would be his last onscreen outing for four years. Playing a Polish detective investigating a cold-case killing that’s eerily mirrored in a novel came out of the blue, and it may have been the case that the star was looking to get as far away from home soil as possible.
In September 2015, Carrey’s partner, Cathriona White, died from a prescription drug overdose, which was ruled a suicide. A year later, her husband, Mark Burton, filed a wrongful death lawsuit against the actor, claiming he’d used his celebrity status to obtain the drugs that led to her death. A month later, White’s mother also filed a wrongful death suit, and while both were dismissed, they left a mark.
“I’ve had incredible highs and incredible accomplishments happen in my life,” Carrey told WRAL. “And at the same time, I’ve also had incredibly unjust and unfair things happen. Not that anybody cares when they hear that about someone like me. But I have. And those things have made me deeper.”
“There’s no one I can’t sit with now, after what I’ve been through, and say, ‘What’s your thing? What’s your pain?'” he explained. “And what an incredible place to be in as an artist.” Principal photography on Dark Crimes began a little over six weeks after White’s passing, and it sounds as though Carrey viewed it as a means of catharsis.
“That was a very dark, terribly painful moment in my life,” he offered. “Poland was a rainy place with a lot of crows, man, and it was beautiful.” It’s an awful film that couldn’t buy a good or even semi-positive review to save its life, and it’s easily the worst thing he’s ever been in, but it sounds as though Carrey got what he wanted, or needed, out of it.
