Jim Carrey credits good luck for making him one of the biggest movie stars on the planet.
The comic actor's modest claim is contradicted by the Life & Times of Jim Carrey: Somebody Stop Me, which, instead, attributes his success to his talent and unstoppable confidence.
The insightful hour-long CBC documentary, airing tonight at 9 p.m., traces Carrey's meteoric rise from his "humble Canadian origins as a little kid who watched a lot of television," to starring roles in a string of major hit films such as Ace Ventura, The Mask and Dumb and Dumber.
However, it's clear that the Jackson's Point native anticipated mega-stardom, despite his dismal 1976 debut as a stand-up comedian at Yuk Yuk's in Toronto.
"Sure he bombed, but just think what outrageous confidence it takes for a 14-year-old kid to think he could pull it off in the first place," recalls Mark Breslin, owner of the comedy club chain.
"Failure is a relative term," the irrepressible Carrey tells Life & Times interviewer Ralph Benmergui.
"There isn't failure unless you accept it. The people who make it are the ones who just keep going."
That philosophy has enabled the performer to overcome rejections and setbacks in both his private life and show business career.
He spent his formative years in Burlington, where he dropped out of high school at age 15 to work in a tire-rim factory, lived in a minivan bus with his "downwardly mobile" family and dreamed of fame and fortune.
Following his unfunny Yuk Yuk's appearance, Carrey spent several years honing his incredible skills as a mimic. Critics tagged him "the next Rich Little," but that was never his goal.
"There will probably come a time when being an impressionist won't be enough. I want to do everything," the then 20-year-old Carrey said in an 1982 Free Press interview.
At that time, he was amazing audiences nightly at London's Clifton Arms Hotel and preparing for his "big break," a guest shot on Johnny Carson's Tonight Show.
A year later, while onstage at the Comedy Store in Los Angeles, Carrey was spotted by TV producer Allan Burns, creator of the Mary Tyler Moore, Rhoda and Lou Grant shows, who gave the young Canadian the starring role in The Duck Factory, a situation comedy that lasted only three months on the air.
"I suppose I'd be upset if I was 40 and my series was dying, but it's too early in my career to worry," Carrey told me in 1984 on the Hollywood set of his ill-fated show. "Besides I believe things -- good or bad -- are meant to happen."
In 1990, out of luck and out of money, he became the "white guy" on the comedy series In Living Color, which, notes tonight's documentary, finally "let Carrey be Carrey."
TV stardom became his bridge to the big screen in the mid-1990s with Ace Ventura, Pet Detective, The Mask, Dumb and Dumber, a scene-stealing turn as The Riddler in Batman Forever and then The Cable Guy.
For the latter, the actor's management group "Team Carrey" got their client the unheard-of fee, $20 million.
Tonight's film ponders how Oscar notice has eluded Carrey despite his exceptional performances in The Truman Show (1998) and last year's Man on the Moon.
The latter earned him a Golden Globe as best actor in a comedy/musical and a nomination at the first annual Canadian Comedy Awards. The awards honouring PFCs (pretty funny Canadians), to be taped in Toronto April 6, will air on CTV the following night and on the Comedy Network on April 9.
Interviewed by Life & Times, biographer Martin Knelman says "Obsession and desperation" are the two motivating forces in Carrey's career.
"He doesn't give up when other people would," adds Knelman, author of The Joker Is Wild: The Trials and Triumphs of Jim Carrey.
That tenacity has propelled Carrey from the very beginning.
"I'm a bit crazed when it comes to self-improvement," the comic admitted in a 1984 Free Press interview. "But then it's the crazed people that get places isn't it?"
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