Profile of Jim Carrey

He is best known for his crazy faces, voices and outburst-antiques. That makes it hard to imagine him being serious; just a normal, middle-aged man behind the various goofy, funny and wacky characters he has performed as.

James Eugene Redmond "Jim" Carrey was born in Newmarket, Ontario, Canada, son of homemaker Kathleen and musician and accountant Percy Carrey on January 17 1962. The youngest of four, two boys and two girls, made his comedy debut when he was 15 with a stand-up act at Toronto's Yuk Yuk's comedy club. On the day he turned 16, he quit school to make a career out of his talent and to support his family after his father had lost his job.

Carrey told CBS correspondent Steve Kroft on 60 Minutes in 2004 that his mother was one source of inspiration for his physical comedy: "I had a sick mom, man. I wanted to make her feel better. Basically, I think she laid in bed and took a lot of pain pills. And I wanted to make her feel better. And I used to go in there and do impressions of praying mantises and weird things, and whatever. I'd bounce off the walls and throw myself down the stairs to make her feel better."

His family became his main driving force to become a successful comedian.

"My family kinda hit the skids. We were experiencing poverty at that point. And I just got angry," says Carrey. "I was angry at the world for doing that to my father. I wanted to bash somebody's head in, basically."

The anger and the anxiety that Carrey has had to battle all these years was a source for his comedy.

"People need motivation to do anything. I don't think human beings learn anything without desperation," says Carrey. "Desperation is a necessary ingredient to learning anything, or creating anything. Period. If you ain't desperate at some point, you ain't interesting."

Throughout his teens he struggled to support his family. With 21 he had made his first appearance on "The Tonight Show" doing impersonations. Seven years later he made a permanent impact on the Fox sketch comedy television series In Living Color. The breakthrough as a comedy star came in 1993-94 when his films Ace Ventura: Pet Detective, The Mask and Dumb and Dumber were released. In 1999 and 2000 he won Golden Globe Awards for The Truman Show and Man on the Moon. In his personal life, he had been through two divorces by then.

Now he is dating Jenny McCarthy and makes $20 million per film after enjoying more success with Liar Liar (1997), Me, Myself & Irene (2000) and Bruce Almighty (2003). But discussing his fame and being the comic idol he is, still makes him feel uncomfortable.

"I just kind of feel like I could be working in a factory again in a month, or something like that, loading trucks, which is kind of where I started out. Honestly, I don't have perspective on it, as it's just kind of one thing to the next, trying to do work, and trying to have fun with what's in front of me."

A modest man.

(Image from thecinemasource.com)