JIM CARREY

Jim Carrey was born in Ontario, Canada in 1962, and by all accounts had a really crappy youth, having to work to help his family while in school, and at one point they lived in a van. Wacky even as a kid, he tried stand-up comedy, and in 1979 he moved to Los Angeles where his talent got him the job of opening for Rodney Dangerfield at The Comedy Store. After much stand-up and some minor TV roles (he auditioned for Saturday Night Live, but wasn't picked!), Carrey in 1983 got the lead in both Introducing...Janet, a TV movie (later re-released as Rubberface), and in a low budget movie, Copper Mountain. The following year he got the lead role in TV's The Duck Factory, but though the critics liked the show and Carrey, it only lasted 13 episodes. Carrey next got the male lead in the vampire comedy, Once Bitten, and was one of the lead aliens in Earth Girls Are Easy, and after several major chances at stardom that didn't materialize, even his fans started to wonder if he would ever "break through". He joined the cast of TV's In Living Color in 1990 (starring the Wayans Brothers and a mostly African American cast), and appeared in many of the shows over its five seasons, and he seemed to be settling in as a cult favorite who would never have wide success. But in 1994, Carrey, who was now 32, had the kind of year actors can only dream of. He starred in Ace Ventura: Pet Detective, The Mask AND Dumb & Dumber all in the same year, and he became the number one comedy star, and deservedly so, and he seemed like an "overnight success", and yet he had been a performer for 15 years! Since that time he has followed in the footsteps of Jerry Lewis and Woody Allen, wanting to make "serious" movies, and resisting making "funny" ones, but he has returned to doing so with regularity, and to his great credit he has resisted doing sequels of his best hits, with the exception of Ace Ventura and Dumb and Dumber To. He is still only 54, and given his willingness to constantly strike out in new directions, one wonders if he may not have lots more greatness to share with the world!