WITH his caricature look and a mouth so unreal it looks like a set of battery-operated chattering teeth, it's a toss-up as to whether Jim Carrey was made for a movie like Batman Forever or the movie was made for him. The consensus is Carrey steals the picture from his co-stars, the Oscar-winning Tommy Lee Jones who plays criminal mastermind Two-Face and Val Kilmer, the new Batman, making him one of Hollywood's most bankable stars.
Carrey was offered the role of dotty scientist Edward Nygma and his alter-ego, the cane-twirling Riddler, a villain extraordinaire, while promoting The Mask at last year's Cannes Film Festival. 'I jumped with joy. I mean, I knew I'd be perfect for it. I couldn't ask for a more perfect chance to show my talents,' he says. Yet the star of last year's sleeper hit Ace Ventura: Pet Detective was worried about taking part in a big-budget studio picture. 'I thought, 'A lot of big actors, a lot of big egos.' It was frightening to me.' So the comedian got serious about his preparation. He practised twirling the Riddler's gold cane for a month and shed nine kilograms in order to slip into a lurid green bodysuit. 'I hired a personal trainer and drank a lot of water just to look acceptable to the human eye in my costume. It's not very forgiving.
'I approached (the role) with the hope of learning something from Tommy Lee and Val, from these guys I respect. But, in hindsight, if I steal the film that's alright with me!' Such glowing praise, though, has only fuelled speculation that all was not well on the 100-days plus shoot in Los Angeles where rumour has it Carrey's impulsive prank-playing got the better of Kilmer, who prefers an intense, methodical approach to his work. 'It's total baloney,' insists Carrey, praising the work of his co-stars Kilmer, Tommy Lee Jones, Nicole Kidman and Chris O'Donnell. 'Most of the cast were people who'd come into their own in the last year and just taken off, so everybody was still hungry. It's the first time I've worked with a great script and such high calibre talent.' Still, rumours of Carrey's volatile temper abound, most recently coming from the Atlanta set of the sequel Ace Ventura: When Nature Calls. It has been claimed he sacked director Tom DeCerchio and replaced him with his pal, Steve Oedekerk, who worked with him on TV's In Living Colour. 'There have been some problems on the Ace Ventura sequel, but my success hasn't made me impossible to work with,' says Carrey with a just-kidding grin. 'There's absolutely no change because I've always been impossible! 'On the projects I've done before Batman, there were limited budgets and then it often was a creative war. But if I kick shit and stuff, it's only for the good of the piece. It's not ego stuff. I think it's important to get something down that's right. Now that I've got a certain amount of power, I make sure I do my best.' Like many actors, Carrey's determination to succeed was borne from a tough childhood in Ontario, Canada. At 13, his father Percy lost his job and the entire family - parents and four kids - got jobs as janitors at a lorry factory. 'We were close to starving,' recalls Carrey, who dropped out of school in the 10th grade to help support the family. 'We lost our house and lived in a Volkswagen camper for six months, then a tent. It was hell.' Carrey's mother, Kathleen, who died when he was 21, suffered from numerous chronic illnesses both real and imagined. 'When she was in real pain I used to go into the bedroom and make her laugh ... Going for laughs helped me through a tough childhood. I spent most of my time sitting in my room staring at the mirror. I never knew I was supposed to socialise. I just spent hours making faces and talking to myself. It upset my mother, who told me my face would freeze in the middle of some grotesque expression.' Carrey started entertaining people by tumbling down stairs. When he was 15, he did his first stand-up routine in a local comedy club and bombed. Two years later, he was back with impressions of people like Jerry Lewis - an actor he is often compared with. Success spurred him to move to Los Angeles in 1981 but he ended up broke and passing hours with psychologists.
'I don't think anybody should go through life without a team of psychologists,' he jokes. 'For a comedian, insanity is not a problem - it's a goal. I would never want to lose all my neuroses. I don't think anybody is interesting until they're had the shit kicked out of them. The pain is there for a reason. I tried to remind myself of this belief when I was depressed.' Carrey's big break, Ace Ventura: Pet Detective, fell into his hands after 'everybody in town' had turned it down. While he was paid just US$350,000 ($2.7 million) for his first starring role, he got a $100,000 raise for The Mask. Then - before either film had been seen - he asked for $1 million for Dumb And Dumber. The film company balked and spent weeks deliberating over a couple of hundred thousand dollars. Meanwhile Ace became 1994's surprise hit, Carrey's stock soared and he walked away with a whopping $7 million for this third starring role.
'It was ridiculous,' he grins, as he remembers being driven to a studio during post-production of The Mask and laughing maniacally in the back seat. 'The driver asked me what was so funny, and I responded: '$7 million! I've just gotten $7 million!' The amount is so ridiculous that it's basically like looking at a Monopoly board.' But his work schedule over the past 18 months, which has included Ace Ventura, The Mask, Dumb And Dumber and Batman Forever, killed his eight-year marriage to actress Melissa Womer, with whom he has a seven-year-old daughter, Jane. Carrey says his ex-wife got fed up with the way success changed him.
'It's a Hollywood cliche,' he says of his marriage. 'Living with me this last couple of years wasn't the most rewarding experience. Career-wise I was doing what I'd always dreamed of doing but I spent my days spewing and thinking and creating. Melissa just got tired of living with a guy whose mind was always someplace else. When you're married you've got to have time for this and that and I was always so wrapped up in my work that it became impossible to consider other things in my life.' Carrey is now dating actress Lauren Holly, 31, star of the award-winning television series Picket Fences, whom he met on the set of Dumb And Dumber. 'The romance just happened,' he admits, 'and it's another cliche. Everybody went, 'Oh gosh, the leading lady and the leading man ...' But the fact is that when you're making movies back-to-back, where else do you meet people?' He lives quietly in the Westwood area of Los Angeles, not all that far from O.J. Simpson's home ('Turn left at the bloody glove,' is his running gag for first-time visitors). 'It's a seven-bedroom house with tennis court, a sauna, a swimming pool, a lagoon and waterfall. It's important to have a beautiful home because you can't go outside it ... ever. Fame has a way of imprisoning you. I mean, I enjoy the fame - except when I'm with Jane,' he says of his daughter, who stays with him three days a week.