Jim Carrey has been in the centre of the limelight recently after a handful of much-publicised bizarre interviews.
Those interviews, alongside a drawn out legal battle with the family of his ex-girlfriend have sparked concerns among the funny man’s fans for his wellbeing.
But before this re-appearance in the zeitgeist, Carrey had all but disappeared from Hollywood to battle with severe depression and mental health problems.
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Carrey told i News during promo for his latest film on Netflix:
At this point, I don’t have depression. There is not an experience of depression.
I had that for years, but now, when the rain comes, it rains, but it doesn’t stay. It doesn’t stay long enough to immerse me and drown me anymore.
Carrey was garnering serious critical acclaim for his works Eternal Sunshine Of The Spotless Mind, The Truman Show and for his portrayal of Andy Kaufman in Man on the Moon.
He was also one of the highest paid actors in the world, before the appeal of his style of humour began to decline, and he started to turn to dramas.
His latest foray into the entertainment world is Jim & Andy: The Great Beyond (which also has the rather long subtitle: Featuring A Very Special, Contractually Obligated Mention Of Tony Clifton).
In the film, viewers get to see never-seen-before footage of Carrey as Kaufman, a comedian who was known for being more than a little bit difficult.
For the film Man on the Moon, Carrey went full method and stayed in character even when the cameras weren’t rolling, often acting in the difficult manner for which Kaufman was known.
The footage was owned by Carrey, and was suppressed by Universal during the time of promo for Man on the Moon because they didn’t want the public thinking their leading man was an a**hole.
But now the new film is on Netflix for all to see.
Carrey has been struggling with the legal battle following the suicide of his ex-girlfriend Cathriona White, whose mother and ex-husband allege committed suicide with pills provided by Carrey.
Despite this battle, he says he has no regrets:
I’m perfectly fine with everything that has happened, even the horrible shit you know, in life and in art.
There is a lot of satisfaction about looking back at those things…
The truth of the matter is that there is no you, so you can never define you, and that the dissatisfaction of it all is leading to the one realisation that there is no I.
I still have huge amounts of egoic attachments. That’s what I feel is being talked about in the story of Jesus in the wilderness. He’s baptised. He receives the Holy Spirit and then he goes into the wilderness to face temptation and all of those things.
They’re talking about the egoic attachments you have, even though you have had an awakening.
He does admit, however, that he isn’t completely free of the darkness.
He said:
What’s happening is really good, but there is some really bad in there too. Some people have come at me in the last couple of years with the intent of breaking off a piece of the Holy Grail for themselves, but the Grail isn’t a thing you can break off.
So they’re going to learn that the hard way. It’s not pleasant.
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If you want to check out more about Carrey, the new film Jim & Andy is out now on Netflix.
