HOLLYWOOD -- We suppose it's natural for someone who became famous for talking out of his anus to question his place in the cosmos. Why was it that he became so famous, and not the guy with the stuttering penis shtick?
We know it's natural for celebrities to sometimes implode, snap or otherwise supernova into oblivion. And we're not suggesting Jim Carrey, the 45-year-old superstar, is on his way to bottling his urine, or being found dehydrated on the side of the highway looking to be beamed up by a UFO.
But you may wonder about Carrey's sure-footedness on terra firma when, asked about the shaman-like mane he has been sporting lately, the Newmarket, Ont.-born actor/comedian answers simply: "I have this hair because I am."
Or consider that, for him, the number 23 is much more than merely the title of his latest film. It represents a very real obsession with the "23 enigma," a belief that everything in life is connected to the numeral, whether directly or by some permutation.
Examples frequently cited include that each parent contributes 23 chromosomes to the DNA of a child, as well as that the Mayans believed the world will end on Dec. 23, 2012 -- 20 plus one, plus two, is 23.
In fact, the 23 phenomenon is so all-consuming, it has inspired no shortage of conspiracy theorists and quasi-religious believers who subscribe to its mystical power, seeing it in the most fantastic, as well as the most mundane, corners of life.
It turns out, Carrey was already among the faithful -- having rebranded his production company from Pitbull Productions to JC23 -- well before the script ever came to his attention.
"It started out for me with a friend of mine in Canada, who handed it down to me," Carrey says in explaining his fascination with 23. "He was seeing it everywhere, adding up licence plates and other things. He had a book of 23 (phenomena) ... I said he was crazy, and then I started seeing it everywhere. Then one day, a few years later, after it had kind of entered my life in a big way and I was driving my friends crazy, somebody handed me a book on the 23rd Psalm ... which is living without fear and knowing you're taken care of.
"I thought it was a great progression from Pitbull Productions, which is (kind of like going from) grabbing hold of life and not letting go, to not sweating it."
Nevertheless, he admits when he first encountered Fernley Phillips' screenplay, "I was freaked out."
Not merely because it concerned the numeral, but because portions of it seemed tailored to Carrey. The original opening scene, he recalls, involved his character, a dog catcher named Walter, capturing -- wait for it -- a pitbull. The metaphor was not lost on Carrey. Nor was his character's occupation.
"The fact he was a dog catcher was a nice wink toward my other work," Carrey says, referring to his breakthrough role in Ace Ventura: Pet Detective. "This is the way my life and the universe works. It's very mysterious. Movies find me and I allow them to find me, and when it becomes a really good fit I do them."
What was his hope for the film, directed by his Batman Forever collaborator Joel Schumacher? That some of that paranoia -- seeing 23s wherever you go -- rubs off on audience members as much as it has on his co-stars.
Virginia Madsen, who plays Carrey's wife in The Number 23, recalls on her first day of filming that Carrey sent her roses -- along with a book stuffed with facts about the numeral "just in case you're a doubter," she says.
Actor Danny Huston says once you develop an affection for a number, "you can't help but find it everywhere. It's very contagious."
Other examples? Schumacher realized The Number 23 would be his 23rd film. Or that the letters in Carrey and Madsen's first and last names add up to 23, as do the combined letters in Schumacher's and Carrey's.
In the movie, opening this week, Carrey's Walter discovers a book that appears to weirdly parallel people, places and occurrances in his own life. The novel's protagonist, a hard-boiled gumshoe named Fingerling, becomes the victim of 23, eventually being driven so insane as to commit murder. Will the same fate befall Walter? And what is with the 23s everywhere he turns?
The project marks yet another dramatic role for the rubber-jowled Carrey, whose desire to be more than a blockbuster clown is as well-documented as his search for inner peace.
He has spoken in interviews about his bouts of depression and many romantic implosions (he is now happily involved with actress Jenny McCarthy). On-screen, he has juggled the likes of Bruce Almighty with such challenging, quirky fare as Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind.
The latter earned Carrey some of the strongest reviews of his career, but he has to join those performers -- notably Tom Hanks -- who can draw a crowd regardless of the genre they're working in.
Carrey, however, sounds undeterred.
"I really have always thought of myself as somebody who lives in the middle of the wheel and is able to go to the extreme, to the outside of the wheel, in any direction. That's the best-case scenario for me ... to be able to be centred and then go out and be zany and funny, or do something that has some depth to it."
"There are many different colours to paint with and I'd hate to get trapped in one little thing. I feel like funny is an appendage, but it's not my whole body."
Not that comedy is necessarily a slam dunk for Carrey, either.
In the past year, he has seen two high-profile projects, Used Guys with Ben Stiller and Ripley's Believe It or Not directed by Tim Burton, collapse because of budget and script concerns. (Ripley's has since been resurrected for a 2009 release.) What's more, a romantic drama in which he was to be reunited with his Mask co-star, Cameron Diaz, also fell apart prior to shooting. The sudden string of false starts -- which led Carrey to fire his agent -- sparked speculation his career was beginning to flounder. Never mind all the 23 talk, or the star's admitted interest in cosmic riddles.
"I've always been introspective -- since I was a little kid ... sitting in a closet, trying to write out the meaning of the universe."
Says Schumacher: "I've never worked with anyone who was a comic genius who doesn't have a private, introspective side. I could name all of them for you. If anybody thinks comics are happy, believe me, the degree of their comic brilliance is based on being so sensitive and seeing everything in life, and dealing with the dark side of life with humour."
As for whether Carrey can ever completely escape being pigeon-holed as a comedic force, the director continues, "I think that's an old-fashioned concept. In old Hollywood, they'd stick people in a compartment and that was all you did ... But Woody Allen, Eddie Murphy, Steve Martin and Robin Williams, certainly, have managed to show many sides of their art. Audiences have not just embraced it, but encouraged it."
In addition to prepping Ripley's Believe It or Not -- "It's an incredible world to open up," Carrey says -- he is voicing the title character in an animated adaptation of Dr. Seuss' Horton Hears A Who.
"I always loved Dr. Seuss and I was lucky enough to be the Grinch ... I love that a person's a person no matter how small, and the idea of worlds within worlds within worlds. Sometimes I sit in my backyard and a hummingbird will come flying past my head and threaten me, and I realize there's no respect for my deed to the land. That's his property as far as he's concerned. We just think we're the ones in control. Everybody does."
JIM CARREY FAST FACTS
BIRTH DATE: Jan. 17, 1962 in Newmarket, Ont.
BREAKTHROUGH COMEDY GIG: At The Comedy Store in L.A., where he moved to in 1979 at age 17. Rodney Dangerfield was so impressed with Carrey's standup routine, he signed the unknown comic to open up on tour with him.
BREAKTHROUGH TV GIG: The TV series In Living Color, in which Carrey's elastic features and manic delivery propelled such characters as Fire Marshall Bill to cult status.
NOTABLE ROLES: Ace Ventura in Ace Ventura and its sequel, When Nature Calls; Andy Kaufman in Man on the Moon; the Grinch in How The Grinch Stole Christmas; Truman Burbank in The Truman Show.
YOU MIGHT HAVE SEEN HIM: In what would turn out to be the final Dirty Harry movie, 1988's The Dead Pool.
CATCH PHRASE: "Alrighty then!"
LAST SEEN WITH: Jenny McCarthy.
BIGGEST HITS: Bruce Almighty, in which he played a man granted the power of God, but none of His wisdom; Dumb and Dumber, opposite Jeff Daniels as a pair of well-meaning dimwits; Batman Forever, as the Riddler.
BIGGEST FLOPS: The Majestic, about a Hollywood writer revitalized by amnesia; The Cable Guy, for which he was the first actor to be paid $20 million US.
COMING PROJECTS: Horton Hears A Who, in which he supplies the voice of Horton. After that, it's on to Ripley's Believe It or Not, directed by Tim Burton.
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