A documentary portrays the descent into madness of an actor who now lives focused on painting
Twenty years ago, Jim Carrey sparked a pay war in Hollywood by receiving a $20 million check for 'A Madman's House'. His status as the world's highest-paid actor had been earned in the mid-1990s by a series of hit comedies designed to exploit his cartoonish mannerisms. 'The mask', 'Ace Ventura' and 'Dos silly fools' managed to make the histrionic term fall short to define the festival of faces. Roger Ebert, the most popular critic in the United States, defined the scene in which the protagonist of 'Ace Ventura' speaks through his butt as "the death of Western civilization".
'A madman at home' was a box office flop, but in return Carrey was able to show that he was more, much more, than a cartoon in two masterpieces that drank from his own personality. 'The Truman Show' told the fable of the first human adopted by a multinational, a man who was born and grew up in a 'reality show' without knowing it. The actor confessed to director Peter Weir that his life was like Truman's. The price of fame prevented him from going anywhere without being assaulted by the paparazzi.
'Man on the Moon' was a 'biopic' about Andy Kaufman, a comedian who took his desire to make the public laugh to the last consequences, until in a bad joke he died at the age of 35 from lung cancer. 'Jim and Andy', a documentary that Netflix has just released, recovers unpublished images of that filming, which Universal has kept safe until now. In them it is discovered that Carrey was Kaufman 24 hours a day, as if he were possessed by the character. Director Milos Forman and the team had to put up with his rudeness, drunkenness and even spitting, which took him to the hospital one day when a colleague lost his patience. "How would you like to start this documentary?" Jim and Andy director Chris Smith asks him. "Well, if it were up to me, I wouldn't start," replies the current Carrey. "And it wouldn't end either."
Two divorces
The deteriorated actor who accompanied the premiere of the documentary last September at the Toronto and Venice festivals has nothing to do with the superstar of the 90s. Carrey has spent six years devoted to painting in his New York studio. His canvases, explosions of color that some critics have said make amateur paintings good, have been therapy to heal a broken heart on too many occasions. At 55 years old, the interpreter has gone through two divorces and is the father of a 29-year-old daughter who has made him a grandfather. The death of his ex-girlfriend two years ago made him withdraw from the public eye. Irish make-up artist Cathriona White took her own life at the age of 30 with pills prescribed to the actor days after they ended their relationship. The family blames Carrey for his death and has engaged in a legal battle that is far from over.
I created myself to succeed», confesses its protagonist in 'Jim and Andy', who during the filming of 'Man on the Moon' came to the set with his head stuck in a paper bag or accompanied by fearsome bikers from Los Angels from Hell. The Canadian acknowledges that he is still haunted by the shadow of his father, a funny guy like him, who did not have the courage to try his luck in a creative trade and was consumed in his job as an accountant until he was fired and died at the age of 51.
There is bitterness and a class complex in Carrey's American dream, which he confesses to having had "a Dickensian childhood." At ten years old he already sent a resume to comedian Carol Burnett and at twelve he left school to help out at home. The check for 10 million dollars that he signed for himself in 1983 to collect ten years later ended up in the pocket of his father, who died three weeks before the premiere of 'The Mask'.
Carrey has carved out a reputation for himself as a difficult actor, undoubtedly the result of the depressions he has fought with Prozac. Far from being broke - for a nonsense of the caliber of 'Like God' he charged 25 million dollars - he needs a good movie that will place him back in the category of star of class A. «Right now I no longer have depression. When the storm arrives it no longer stays », he congratulated himself last week. And he concluded: “I am no longer in the business. I don't care what people will think of me after I'm dead."