Which actors known for their kindness suddenly became undrinkable on a set?
Jim Carrey is generally appreciated by crews and has a good reputation on set.
However, in 1999, while filming The Grinch , a children's story about the character of a green-haired bogeyman, Jim Carrey changed his personality.
The affable comic has become obnoxious and unmanageable.
At the origin of the problem, the special make-up and the costume that the actor had to wear daily.
Jim Carrey compared the process to a real torture session.
To transform into a Grinch, it was necessary to put on facial prostheses and large contact lenses (on which the fake snow present on the set kept sticking). You also had to put on a very tight-fitting green yak fur suit that covered the whole body from head to toe and was horribly itchy.
“It felt like I was being buried alive every day,” Jim Carrey said of the process. “The first day, I stayed in the makeup artist’s chair for 8 hours. It was so unbearable that the same evening, when I returned to my dressing room, I kicked the wall down because I was so frustrated. I told Ron Howard [the director] that I didn't want to make the movie anymore. »
But Ron Howard and his partner, producer Brian Grazer, try to reassure the actor, promising him that things will work out.
Ron Howard and Brian Grazer with Jim Carrey.
But things don't get better. Suffering from claustrophobia that becomes more intense every day, Jim Carrey ends up attacking the team.
Makeup artist Kazuhiro Tsuji is on the front line since he is the one who applies the special makeup to the actor's face every morning.
“Jim was mean to everyone, he says, and he was unmanageable. Two weeks after the start of filming, we had really only shot three full days. Jim was constantly absent. He would disappear and when he came back all his makeup had to be redone because he had torn it off. We couldn't move forward, he was sabotaging our work. And he was constantly scolding me and harassing me…”
Jim Carrey turned out to be so odious towards Kazuhiro Tsuji that the latter took sick leave for a week and sought support from a psychologist to be able to finish filming.
Informed of the problems that the star causes on the set, producer Brian Grazer will finally have the idea of bringing on the set a CIA trainer whose main mission is to prepare the secret agents to endure torture...
And it will work.
The trainer will give Jim Carrey keys to manage his anxiety attacks, among which:
-change activity as soon as stress starts to rise (watching TV, eating)
-ask a friend to come and give you a little slap
- give yourself a big punch in the leg
-light a cigarette
Jim Carrey smoked a lot during filming (2 packs per day), using a cigarette holder, because the synthetic fur of his Grinch costume being particularly flammable, it was necessary to keep any heat source as far away as possible.
The filming will nonetheless remain a "terrible" ordeal for Jm Carrey, who will undergo a total of 92 make-up sessions...
Posted Sep 1, 2023, 4:18 PM UTC