“It’s a bit crazy”: How a risky gamble and a Dundee comedian earned Jim Carrey $30m
Actor, comedian, and definitely not a clone, Jim Carrey, became accustomed to being one of Hollywood’s highest-paid stars after becoming the first actor to crack the $20million per picture barrier in the 1990s.
Not that he was living on chump change before Ben Stiller’s cult classic, The Cable Guy, with a remarkable 1994, which saw him rocket from semi-obscurity to household name status in less than a year when Ace Ventura: Pet Detective, The Mask, and Dumb and Dumber were released, earning him a pretty penny or two.
That continued into the new millennium; he offered to return his $20m salary if he could be excused from Ron Howard’s How the Grinch Stole Christmas until the CIA and the Bee Gees talked him down from a ledge, and he pocketed a cool $25m for doing Morgan Freeman’s job as God in Bruce Almighty.
By the late 2000s, though, there were signs that his drawing power was on the wane. After a couple of disappointing performers in a row, Carrey decided that in order to underline his faith in his next star vehicle, he would forego any and all upfront payments in exchange for 36.2% of the movie’s gross profits.
What was he so confident in that he stood to make absolutely nothing if the film flopped? The loose adaptation of a book written by a Dundonian comic, of course. During his time as a freelance producer for the BBC, actor, comic, TV presenter, and author Danny Wallace decided to adopt a unique challenge: say ‘yes’ to everything for six months.
Using that as the jumping-off point, Peyton Reed’s comedy, Yes Man, finds Carrey’s loan officer attending a self-help course, where Terence Stamp’s motivational guru encourages him to make the same bargain as Wallace did in his book. From there, rubber-faced hijinks ensue, and the source material’s Dundee-born creator couldn’t believe what was happening.
“It’s a bit crazy,” he admitted to Den of Geek. “And all thanks to the word ‘yes’. It’s become particularly odd now, because it’s suddenly real, and to watch this huge machine go into overdrive has been slightly overwhelming. For such a long time, there was a very small team involved, and now there are literally hundreds of people involved. It’s quite a humbling experience.”
In the end, Yes Man hoovered up $223m at the box office, so when all was said and done, Carrey’s gamble not to accept any payment until after the receipts had been counted worked out handsomely for his bank balance, with the actor estimated to have netted around $30m for believing in the picture.
There were no guarantees that audiences would embrace Yes Man, but they did in a big way, with Wallace’s vow to avoid saying no culminating in a Hollywood superstar landing an eight-figure windfall.
