I’m so grateful we have Jim Carrey. Especially after the passing of Robin Williams. In my opinion, Jim is one of the greatest comedians ever – the way he could make you laugh your ass off, and he never had to use any swear words or profanity.
Jim is just one of those celebrities you can’t really hate and he’s still my favorite comedian and comedic actor ever.
But his recent withdrawal from the public eye has sparked concern among his closest friends.
Jim Carrey, 62, is to the comedy genre of the movie industry what Eminem is to hip-hop, what Mike Tyson is to boxing, what Michael Jordan is to basketball, what Arnold Schwarzenegger is to bodybuilding.
The American-Canadian actor became a huge star in the 90s and took the world by storm with his rubbery body movements and flexible facial expressions. He has a lot of iconic movies under his belt and but the two-time Golden Globe winner is also a devoted family man and daddy.
Became homeless
Given his difficult background, Jim knows how important family is and he didn’t want to make the same mistakes as his own parents.
“I had an odd childhood, it was a lot more messed up than I thought, apparently,” Jim Carrey said in 2003.
The famous actor was born in 1962 in Newmarket, Ontario, Canada, and was raised a Roman Catholic with his three older siblings. Growing up, Jim’s family moved around a lot and lived in the suburbs of Toronto. Carrey was reclusive as a child he ”never knew he was supposed to socialise.”
When he was eight, the natural-born comedian started making faces in front of the mirror and discovered he had a talent for doing impressions.
His mom and dad struggled financially, and it was hard for everyone in the family. As a kid, Jim did what he could to cheer them up – he used to go to bed with his tap shoes just in case his parents needed a little laughter in the middle of the night.
Why he lived in a tent
But even though Jim tried to fill the house with laughter, the family received a heavy blow when his father lost his job at 51.
”It really broke his heart. It was hard to watch,” Jim told the Edmonton Journal in 1995.
With his family in free fall, Jim dropped out of high school to help support his mother and father. For a while, the whole family worked as janitors and security guards, doing eight-hour shifts at a local wheel-rim factory.
But it was a toxic workplace; the family hated working there and soon realized they were losing themselves to their anger. They quit but then they had no place to live. His mom and dad moved into their Volkswagen, and Jim and his brother spent months living in a tent.
“For a while, we pitched a tent on my sister’s lawn in the country. And then for a while, we went to campsites around Ontario. And we’d use the facilities there and we actually had a lot of fun. We had more fun there than we did when we were doing this job that we didn’t like,” Jim said.
Why he resented his parents
When Jim turned 17, he could support his family by performing comedy at different clubs in downtown Toronto. Unfortunately, during his whole upbringing, the family’s financial situation made it hard for Jim to fulfill his dream of pursuing a career in the show business.
