"I'm a bit crazed..."
Jim Carrey	Who is the man behind "The Mask?" We overlooked him when we profiled the Grinch and also when we profiled Andy Kaufman. Who's brave enough and strange enough to become a pet detective? Why, Jim Carrey, of course: Sentinel/Eccentrik/Scintillator. By most accounts (including his own), Carrey was exactly the sort of youth you'd imagine: a rambunctious and fearlessly outspoken child with a wildly active imagination. The youngest of four siblings, Carrey was born and raised in Toronto. As a child he often practiced his humor by pulling faces in front of the mirror and by doing impersonations of his alcoholic grandparents. He did standup comedy for his schoolmates in the seventh grade when his teacher coaxed her irrepressibly comic pupil to behave by allowing him to do impromptu 15-minute routines for the class at the end of each day.
We see here, even in his childhood, an Eccentrik playfulness about the world and a Scintillator craving to entertain. But perhaps the most defining period of Carrey's young life commenced shortly after his 14th birthday, when his father, an aspiring jazz saxophonist who had worked for years as an accountant to feed the family, lost his job. They were forced to relocate to Scarborough, where both parents and all four children took jobs as janitors and security personnel at the Titan Wheels factory. Carrey was deeply embittered by this second turn of fortune, and working eight-hour shifts at the factory in addition to taking classes at a new high school did little to improve his disposition. Between school and work there just wasn't much time anymore for a childhood. His grades plummeted from straight A's into the D and F range—not surprising, considering he slept through most of his classes. Carrey ultimately dropped out of high school, and the family dropped out of Titan Wheels; they lived in a VW camper van and drifted back to Toronto. In Toronto, Carrey sought an outlet for his anger by performing at comedy clubs. With material supplied by his father, and dressed by his mother in a yellow polyester suit, he made his debut at Yuk Yuk's in Toronto, where both his attire and his delivery were booed mercilessly. Demonstrating a strong Eccentrik resilience, Carrey doggedly honed his shtick in Toronto clubs then moving on to Los Angeles where he became particularly reputed for his impersonations of such notables as Michael Landon, Gandhi, and Jimmy Stewart. He soon came to the attention of Rodney Dangerfield and was put on his tour. Carrey's success in the field of live comedy isn't surprising considering his Profile. Scintillator Emoting gives him a need to please and entertain while his Eccentrik Working style gives him an ability to manipulate creatively in 3-dimensions and his Sentinel Thinking allows him to capture physical nuance like no one else. This success with stand-up paved the way to movies where his Scintillator body-elastic talent and his incredible Eccentrik working drive for new and bolder wierdness gave him notoriety. When you saw Carrey just you didn't forget him—he is a cartoon set to life. "I honestly feel that I am so gifted in my life that, I swear to God, I don't sweat those [little] things. It would be ungrateful. I have a great life, I have great people in my life, I'm a person who came from talking with his butt to working with Peter Weir and Milos Forman. I am really lucky and I know that," says Carrey. "I often break up the day by jumping on [a studio tram] and harassing people or charging into it like a rhino Ö" Carrey says of Ron Howard and Rick Baker with whom he worked on How the Grinch Stole Christmas, "Both Ron and Rick are children. In this business it's hard to find people who are able to dance with their inner child without the help of stimulants. "They are both the sweetest guys you ever want to meet. They just want to play on screen and take the world with them. "That's all I've ever wanted to do. Just take everybody with me and get lost for a couple of hours." That Scintillator playfulness won't ever go away. We can only imagine the fun and fancy that takes place on one of his movie sets. "I honestly have to say, I have the best job," Carrey said. "Because I'm fascinated with human behaviour. It's like being a psychiatrist, or some kind of scientist." Now, we're not going to say that this is proof of Sentinel Thinking, but it is Sentinel-typical. They are fascinated with human behavior. His amicable relationship with first wife Melissa Womer (he was later married to actress Lauren Holly for a year) means he enjoys a greater presence in his 13-year-old daughter Jane Carrey's life these days, including such mundane-seeming dad tasks as taking her to school. In fact, Carrey has said he even enjoys the simple sense of domestic satisfaction that comes with housework, whether it's tidying a room or doing laundry. Now, where does this come into play with such a dynamic Profile? It's that physical realm. He loves to move and manipulate the world whether it's rearranging his own face or folding the laundry. We hardly think he folds it the normal way. "When I first got famous, I bought into the idea that you should hire people to do everything, because you can. I wanted to be Bruce Wayne or something," Carrey said. "Eventually I just realized I gotta wash my own cape." Even back in Toronto in the early days, Carrey blew everybody else off the stage. A rubber-limbed, gonzo impressionist, he became both Katharine Hepburn and Henry Fonda in On Golden Pond. He followed that up with both Paul McCartney and Stevie Wonder singing Ebony And Ivory. In between, he seemed to simply feed off the energy in the room as he vamped through his nearly hour-long act. "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," says the irrepressible Carrey. "There isn't failure unless you accept it. The people who make it are the ones who just keep going." "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?" Carrey has changed since his early days. He still works just as hard and plays just as much, but now he's making money for it. And his crazed attitude about self-improvement and self-molding really came out in his role as Andy Kaufman in "Man on the Moon." "Andy came back from the dead to do this movie. I felt like I was channelling him. It was as if he was in my body and that was not always comfortable for either of us," recalls Carrey. Danny DeVito who worked with both Kaufman and Carrey said, "Jim Carrey only came to our set once or twice and, on those days, he was very subdued. The rest of the time it was Andy who came to work. For me, it was a revelation. Jim knew instinctively the kind of things Andy did. One day he came to the set driving an ice cream truck. He made all of us sing songs before he'd give us an ice cream." "I went to bed as Andy. I woke up in the morning as Andy. It was a strange and wonderful experience. "The difference between Andy and I is that I always tell people when it's a joke and when it isn't. Andy may not have always known what was real and what wasn't but I do." That's because you live in the physical world, Jim. Jim Carrey: a master of manipulating the physical world and entertaining millions doing it.

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