HOLLYWOOD -- Once again, appearances are deceiving.

With fame, fortune and legions of adoring fans, it may look as if Jim Carrey has everything he could possibly want.

He admits he has achieved far more than he allowed himself to dream of when he was a high school dropout in the Toronto district of Scarborough.

His family worked as security guards at the Titan Wheel Factory and lived out of their Volkswagen camper, but Carrey dreamed of being on the stand-up comedy circuit and starring in movies.

He's done all that and much, much more, but there are still areas of his life that are incomplete.

"I don't have as well-rounded a life as I'd like. I don't have a complete family and it's something I crave. Family is the underdeveloped part of my life," says Carrey.

In 1987, Carrey married waitress Melissa Womer and they had a daughter, Jane.

The marriage lasted until 1993, when he divorced Womer so he could marry Lauren Holly, whom he'd met shooting Ace Ventura: Pet Detective.

That marriage lasted less than a year.

He didn't date seriously again until he met Renee Zellweger on the set of Me, Myself & Irene in 1999. They got engaged, but broke up near the end of 2000.

He insists he's not currently in a relationship.

"I'm bonding with my daughter. It's really cool because she's 14 and she actually wants to hang out with me."

Carrey is the darling of the Hollywood Foreign Press Association, having won Golden Globe awards for his work in The Mask, Liar Liar, The Truman Show and Man on the Moon, but he has yet to be recognized with an Oscar.

"I have so much in my life that I hesitate going into the what-I-want mode, but I admit an Oscar would be tremendous. It would be a really sweet thing to be recognized by my peers."

There is already a buzz in Hollywood that Carrey could get an Oscar nomination for his wistful romantic drama The Majestic, which opens on Dec. 21.

He plays a 1950s blacklisted Hollywood screenwriter who develops amnesia after a car accident and gets mistaken for a smalltown war hero.

The film from Frank Darabont, the Oscar-nominated director of The Green Mile and The Shawshank Redemption, is being compared to Frank Capra's It's a Wonderful Life and Carrey to Jimmy Stewart.

"If any of it happens, it will be wonderful, but I am fully prepared to wait for a lifetime achievement award and I hope it comes in 80 years. I want to have that kind of body of work that shows I wasn't exclusively a comedian.

"I don't want to leave comedy to become a dramatic actor. I want to do everything."

Next up for Carrey is Dog Years, which should begin filming in March.

"I play a widower whose dead wife comes back to haunt him when he starts a relationship with a younger woman.

"Nicole Kidman is going to play the ghost. They haven't cast the young love interest yet."

He is also in the early stages of developing a film based on the life of Howard Hughes.

Carrey says there will not be a Mask 2, Grinch 2 or another Ace Ventura though he has been offered such vehicles numerous times.

"Life is too short for me to want to repeat characters, and there are so many themes and characters I want to explore and my time is not finite."


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