When opposites attract: The story of how James Dean inspired Jim Carrey
When discussing comedic actors giving serious performances, the same names tend to come up over and over again. There’s Robin Williams in Good Will Hunting, Steve Carell in Little Miss Sunshine, Adam Sandler in either Punch-Drunk Love or Uncut Gems, and arguably, the best of the bunch title belongs to Jim Carrey.
There are two vital pieces of evidence that make up Carrey’s case. His title role in The Truman Show has something of a comedic edge, but it’s more about a man finally taking control of his life after having all his decisions made for him, only to realise the futility of free will. The properly serious one is Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, where as Joel Barish he explored what it means to love, to lose, and battle the inherent nature of humanity.
These two high-profile journeys outside of his comfort zone prove that Carrey cannot be placed into one box. He’s a brilliant and successful comedic actor with many fabulously funny films under his belt, but he’s also willing to put himself in positions that require an entirely separate skillset. As he explained part of a roundtable discussion for The Hollywood Reporter (THR), it doesn’t matter what he’s doing, as long as he’s putting all of himself into it.
“The performance is love, it’s a dance for me,” he said, “I love actors who employ every bit of their instrument”. That’s when he name-dropped his very unlikely source of inspiration, continuing: “Look at James Dean. This is a man who was expressing everything with every…you know, he didn’t just get emotional, he was emotion. It was tearing him apart, you know, and…everything was in it, and I love that kind of thing, so I always think of myself as a kind of painting.”
Hearing Jim Carrey, a rubber-faced comedy genius, compare himself to the late teen idol, who was a fast-living, short-burning candle existing more in legend and memory than he ever did when he was alive, is a little surreal but not out of place, as the Canadian surprised with an anecdote. As well as admitting to being a fan of his work, Carrey had also impersonated Dean as part of his very first TV appearance in 1983. In a way, his words about him for THR came a full-circle moment.
The most obvious comparison between the two is their use of method acting. Dean was a literal student of the technique, studying under the great Lee Strasberg in the 1950s. Carrey famously went all-in when portraying “anti-comedian” Andy Kaufman for the film Man on the Moon. He lived as the character even when cameras weren’t rolling, going as far as to meet the dead star’s own daughter while pretending to be him. This is probably the closest Carrey came to matching Dean’s “emotion”, as he would put it.
Actors famously take inspiration from all kinds of sources, regardless of how similar they are to themselves. Carrey’s admiration for Dean and his full-throttle approach to performance doesn’t seem natural, but it actually makes a lot of sense if you stop to look at it.
