Jim Carrey has been one of the most notable faces of comedy in Hollywood over the years. He has acted in several critically and commercially successful romantic as well as drama films. A key factor that has made his movies so special is his method acting. The Mask fame was successful in dissolving himself fully into any role he desired.
While his ability to pull off method acting made him such a big star, some people were also concerned if Jim Carrey was going too much with the process. His stories of method acting were so bizarre that when he appeared in Me, Myself & Irene, he was repeatedly warned by the director to not take the approach of method acting.
Why was Jim Carrey warned against method acting?
Jim Carrey rose to prominence for his comedy flicks like The Mask, Dumb and Dumber, and Ace Ventura: Pet Detective. The actor was notorious for taking a very serious approach of method acting where he would even throw away his off-screen personality. While it earned him immense praise for his movies, it was not the same for his other co-stars and crew who were often freaked out by his intense approach.
Man on the Moon was one of the most significant films of Jim Carrey’s career where he played the role of late comedian and actor, Andy Kaufman. The Canadian-American actor was so scarily engrossed in the role of Kaufman, that he wouldn’t even respond off-screen to anybody calling him ‘Jim’ instead of ‘Andy’.
“People were never instructed to call me ‘Andy,’ but they’d never get an answer if they called for ‘Jim’. I was so deep into it that it was scary for a lot of people around me.”
Although Man on the Moon was not successful critically or commercially, Jim Carrey attained worldwide acclaim for his remarkable performance. However, when he went on to work in Me, Myself & Irene after the 1999 Andy Kaufman biographical, director Peter Farrelly was strictly against his approach of method acting.
The director ordered strictly that The Truman Show actor should relax and not go hard on himself for the 2000 black comedy. Carrey stated that his method acting went so intense in Man on the Moon that he lost himself. Something similar was also voiced by Peter Farrelly who warned that there should be a limit to everything.
“By all accounts, including his own, he’d gone a little nu*s. So when we hooked up with Jim on Me, Myself & Irene, the first thing we said was, ‘Jim, you should approach this job as a vacation because you’re not going to live very long if you keep becoming these characters. Just have fun on this one.’”
With all the stories that came out, it can’t be denied that the actor took it too far with his acting. This also led his other co-stars like Martin Freeman to go crazy. It was not only the Marvel star who bashed him publicly but another co-star Paul Giamatti also spoke out about Jim Carrey.
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Jim Carrey’s method acting wasn’t so pleasant for his co-stars
The late comedian Andy Kaufman had an alter ego called Tony Clifton. When Jim Carrey helmed that role in the 1999 movie, he also performed some of the most unpleasant feats of Clifton which his co-stars didn’t like at all.
Paul Giamatti who played the role of Bob Zmuda in Man on the Moon revealed that the Batman Forever star filled his pockets with Limburger cheese and touched everyone on set.
“He’d constantly be hugging people, and he had it all over his hands and stuff. It was disgusting. He was touching people and making them shake his hands all the time. He smelled horrible.”
It is also reported that the whole filming of the Miloš Forman directorial was so bizarre, that Universal couldn’t afford the risk of releasing them to the public. The studio was afraid that it would have tampered with Jim Carrey’s image very badly. However, Netflix released a documentary in 2017 that followed the whole off-screen drama of the movie to show the stark contrast between the actor and the character played by him.
Jim & Andy: The Great Beyond can be streamed on Netflix. Man on the Moon can be rented on Apple TV+ while Me, Myself & Irene can be streamed on Prime Video.
Source: Entertainment Weekly
