Credit: Far Out / YouTube Still
Sun 28 June 2026 1:30, UK
Jim Carrey had starred in a few movies during the 1980s, like Francis Ford Coppola’s Peggy Sue Got Married and the goofy comedy Earth Girls Are Easy, but once he asserted himself with the sketch show In Living Colour, he went straight to the Hollywood big leagues with a string of hits that all came at once.
As soon as the show ended, Carrey popped up in three major comedies, all released in 1994, the first of which was his co-written venture Ace Ventura: Pet Detective, and then he turned green for The Mask, bringing plenty of slapstick to the strange superhero comedy. Then Carrey also took on Dumb and Dumber, which became a generational hit, and all of a sudden, he was the go-to leading man for anything slightly ridiculous, his penchant for an over-exaggerated facial expression and physical comedy serving him well.
Roles in Batman Forever as The Riddler and other comedies like The Cable Guy, and Ace Ventura: When Nature Calls followed, but then something shifted. Carrey was ready to prove that he could do something much more nuanced and more dramatic, even if it seemed like he much preferred to make a fool of himself for laughs.
The Truman Show was a turning point for the actor, because, although he was still working in the realm of comedy here, Peter Weir’s movie had much more depth to it than a Farrelly brothers production. This was, beneath the humour, a serious meditation on life, surveillance, and, ultimately, the dangers of reality television (presented in a way that was incredibly ahead of its time).
And then came Man on the Moon, the first proper dramatic role of Carrey’s career that would alter many people’s perceptions of him. He’d even win a Golden Globe for his performance. Directed by legendary filmmaker Miloš Forman, the tragicomic film explored the life of the entertainer Andy Kaufman, a revolutionary figure in comedy who, time and again, asserted that he wasn’t a comedian at all.
The performer sadly died when he was just 35 from lung cancer, which is explored in the film, including the popular death hoax rumour that circulated following his passing. Carrey plays the star terrifically, really embodying him as he rose from being a struggling performer with a reluctance to be your average joke-telling comedian, to a controversial yet iconic figure in the industry.
Carrey dedicated himself to the role so fully that Forman admits to hardly knowing what the actor was actually like. “I really can say that I never worked with Jim Carrey,” Forman said (via The Los Angeles Times), “I worked with Andy, Tony, [and Kaufman’s other characters] Latka, Elvis and Foreign Man”.
Further reading: Cutting Room Floor
When Kaufman’s close friend Bob Zmuda first saw Carrey as Kaufman, he was moved to tears. He knew that this was the perfect actor for the part. “Jim was literally born to play this role,” he said, before referring to a videotape that Carrey showed Zmuda of him in character, “Before he showed it to Miloš, he wanted to show it to me. I drove over to his house, and he put the tape in”.
It was all too much for Zmuda, who felt like he was seeing his friend brought back to life, recalling, “About a minute into it, I started crying like a baby. If I hadn’t known, I would have thought it was Andy. And this was before makeup, costume and hair.”
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