3
Jim Carrey Seems To Have Actually Lost His Mind Playing Andy Kaufman
After spending his career playing a pet detective, a man in a supernatural mask, a dumb guy who's friends with a dumber guy, and the Riddler, Jim Carrey finally got the chance to show off that he was a real Actor with a capital A when he starred in the biopic about comedian Andy Kaufman, Man On The Moon. And while he gives a solid performance, the true depths of his method acting madness weren't revealed at the time because, Carrey says, Universal didn't want him to look like an asshole.
That all changed with the Netflix documentary Jim & Andy: The Great Beyond, which showed Carrey go to such disturbing extremes that even Jared Leto would probably tell him to take it down a notch. Carrey describes going to the beach and being telepathically contacted by Kaufman's ghost, who announced his arrival by making a school of dolphins surface, then tapped Carrey on the shoulder and said, "Sit down. I'll be doin' my movie." What happened afterwards, Carrey said, was out of his control. Yeah. Sure, Jim.
If you've seen the movie, you know that Kaufman had his own alter ego, an uncouth lounge singer called Tony Clifton, and to portray Clifton, Carrey took up heavy boozing, smoking, and assholery. He made everybody call him Tony on set, snubbed a visiting studio head, and forced Oscar-winning director Milos Forman to grovel before him. Carrey even stormed into Steven Spielberg's office as Clifton, demanding to see the director so he could complain about the "phony" shark in Jaws. If your name was Jim Carrey, I'm sure it was all hilarious.