Jim Carrey went from a family living in a van to $20 million a film
As a teenager, Jim Carrey spent months sleeping in a tent by Lake Ontario while his family lived in a Volkswagen van. Within two decades he had become the first comic actor paid $20 million upfront for a single movie, on the strength of five hits released in just two years.
Carrey was born on January 17, 1962, in Newmarket, Ontario, the youngest of four children. His mother, Kathleen, kept house; his father, Percy, was a musician who also worked as an accountant. The family name had once been spelled Carré, a trace of French-Canadian roots on his father's side, while his mother's people were Irish and Scottish.
The talent showed early. At eight he was pulling faces in the mirror and discovering he could mimic people. At ten he wrote to Carol Burnett announcing himself a master of impressions who deserved a spot on her show, and was thrilled to get a form letter back. Money, though, was scarce. After a spell of homelessness, things steadied when Percy found accounting work at the Titan Wheels tyre factory in Scarborough. In exchange for a house opposite the plant, Jim and his older brother worked overnight eight-hour shifts there as janitors and guards. He left school on his sixteenth birthday and began doing comedy in downtown Toronto while still clocking in at the factory.
Recognition came with the Fox sketch show In Living Color, which ran from 1990 to 1994. Then 1994 brought Ace Ventura: Pet Detective, The Mask and Dumb and Dumber, followed in 1995 by a Batman film and an Ace Ventura sequel. That run earned him his landmark salary, starting with The Cable Guy in 1996. Comedies such as Liar Liar and Bruce Almighty kept the momentum going.
Typecasting never quite held him. He won Golden Globes for playing the lead in The Truman Show (1998) and for portraying Andy Kaufman in Man on the Moon (1999), and earned a BAFTA nomination for Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. Since the 2010s he has made fewer films, though younger audiences know him as Doctor Eggman in the Sonic the Hedgehog series. Beyond acting, he also works as a visual artist.
Source: Jim Carrey
