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Jim Carrey “Just Didn’t Want To Be In Hollywood Anymore”

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Updated on July 6, 2023

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Jim Carrey is speaking candidly about his dissatisfaction with Hollywood.

The 56-year-old actor discusses his decision to leave Hollywood for a few years and his desire to return in the forthcoming American comedy series “Kidding” in an interview for his new cover story with The Hollywood Reporter.

He said, “I just didn’t want to be in the business anymore. I didn’t like what was happening, the corporations taking over and all that. And maybe it’s because I felt pulled toward a different type of creative outlet and  I really liked the control of painting — of not having a committee in the way telling me what the idea must be to appeal to a four-quadrant whatever.”

Jim said that he kept asking himself the same straightforward question: “Who am I?”

“My plan was not to join Hollywood, it was to destroy it.”

Carrey, though, went on to become a great success and a household name. The actor says he didn’t enjoy his fame. “There’s a weightlessness to it,” he said. “You can dream about it all you want, but until you get it, you don’t realize that it’s really not a place that’s very comfortable for very long.”

Recent political cartoons he’s produced have criticized Donald Trump’s government for everything from the Space Force to his summit with Kim Jong Un to the president’s rumored romance with Stormy Daniels.

Carrey says, “I knew sooner or later I’d find a worthy way to use Twitter. My manager used to be like, ‘Don’t do stuff on there. You’re f***ing insane.’”

At the Television Critics Association summer press tour earlier this month, Carrey told journalists that Trump “probably loves them, on some level.”

He told the magazine about his propensity for making art. “I didn’t know why I was doing it initially and, as usual, a year or two later, I wake up and realize that I’ve been given a spiritual answer through it,” he commented. “I’ve been on the journey of identity, of who am I, and that’s it. That’s the question. If there’s an ‘it’ in this world, it’s ‘Who am I?’ There is no ‘I,’ and yet it has a shape. See what I mean?”

Additionally, he explained his motivation for making a political statement: “To watch half the country ignore what is quite obviously right in front of them, I liken it to standing on the railroad tracks cheering for the locomotive that’s about to run you down. ‘Look at it, look how beautiful it is. Man, it’s really fast. It’s getting here quickly….’”

He continued, “When it’s all said and done and the Feds finally close in and he hands over the keys to Trump Tower and Mar-a-Lago and whatever else he has, there’s going to be a celebration in this country such as has never been seen before. I guarantee it.”

In the upcoming Showtime series “Kidding,” written by screenwriter Dave Holstein, Carrey has agreed to portray Mr. Pickles, a beloved children’s television character whose family starts to fall apart. This will be his first series regular role in more than twenty years.

Carrey tells THR that he returns to Hollywood a changed man. Carrey is well-liked by fans for his parts in the movies “Dumb and Dumber,” “The Truman Show,” “Man On The Moon,” and others.

He admits, “I’m not back in the same way. I don’t feel I’m little Jim trying to hang on to a place in the stratosphere anymore — I don’t feel like I’m trying to hold on to anything.”

It’s difficult to imagine the movie industry without Jim Carrey. Who else could make us weep and laugh simultaneously as Jim did?