The role Jim Carrey gained 40 pounds for and never played: “It’s a tough thing to come back from”
The 1990s allowed many of today’s biggest stars to break through into the mainstream and establish themselves as promising talents. For Jim Carrey, the fertile cinematic landscape gave him the perfect opportunity to appear in a string of comedies that would become unforgettable. While it’s harder for comedy movies to truly endure today, Carrey’s movies became a hit with many and are still loved decades later.
From The Mask to the Ace Ventura movies, Carrey established himself as a comedic actor first before appearing in complex roles that proved he was capable of more than exaggerated facial expressions and slapstick. He starred as the titular character in Peter Weir’s The Truman Show in 1998, which helped him to branch out further, and it is now regarded as one of his most iconic performances.
Since then, Carrey has moved between more dramatic roles and classic comedic parts, from Bruce Almighty and How the Grinch Stole Christmas to Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. While Carrey has made significantly fewer movies now than he did in the 1990s and the 2000s—in the past eight years, he has only appeared in the Sonic the Hedgehog movies—he still remains a star of Hollywood.
It seems as though as Carrey has grown older, he has become more selective with the roles he chooses. This is why he decided to drop out of the production of The Three Stooges back in 2010, a movie he didn’t think would actually get made. It did come to fruition, however, with Bobby and Peter Farrelly directing the slapstick movie inspired by the iconic comedy trio of the same name. It was eventually released in 2012, but Carrey had no involvement – nor did the other actors he was meant to appear alongside: Sean Penn and Benicio Del Toro.
Carrey had previously worked with the Farrelly brothers back in the mid-1990s when they directed him in Dumb and Dumber, which helped to propel the actor to further mainstream popularity. He was ready to work with them for The Three Stooges, but soon, he realised that playing Curly was a much bigger commitment than he had anticipated.
“For me, I don’t really want to do anything halfway, and I don’t feel like a fat suit does it,” he explained to MTV.
The actor continued: “I started experimenting with it a little bit, and I gained 35, 40 pounds. I wanted to gain another 30, 40. When you’re [Robert] De Niro in your 20s or early 30s, you can kind of come back from that. It’s a tough thing to come back from when you’re upwards of 30. Your body can’t carry it or you can have a cardiac arrest.”
Clearly, the physical commitment just wasn’t worth it for Carrey. He added, “Put that with Sean Penn and Benicio Del Toro slapping me in the head all day long, and someone will lose an eye. It won’t be good. It’ll be like Midnight Express. It’ll be awful.”
Instead, the role of Curly went to Will Sasso, while Sean Hayes played Larry and Chris Diamantopoulos portrayed Moe. Although the movie wasn’t exactly critically revered, it was rather successful with the public. Still, it’s interesting to imagine how it would have fared with Carrey playing one of the main characters instead.
