Today's Birthday 17/1
Today's Birthday, January 17: Canadian actor and comedian Jim Carrey (1962 - )
A recent behind-the-scenes documentary showed the lengths Jim Carrey will go to for his art.
Embracing the concept of method acting, Carrey never broke character while portraying legendary anti-humour comedian Andy Kaufman for 1999 film Man on the Moon.
Jim & Andy: The Great Beyond, featuring previously unseen on-set footage spliced with modern-day interviews, premiered at the Venice Film Festival in 2017 before winding up on Netflix.
Born in 1962 in Toronto, Canada, Carrey worked eight hours a day after school as a child to help his poverty-stricken family.
With a talent for making others laugh, he dropped out of high school at age 16 to work in comedy clubs.
He moved to the US in his late teens and went on to make his film debut with Rubberface in 1983, the same year he made his first appearance on late-night American television, before starring in the dark comedy Once Bitten in 1985.
Carrey continued to showcase his impressionist stand-up act in the early 1990s.
It wasn't until 1994 that the lanky goofball hit the spotlight for his manic, slapstick comedic performances.
That year he starred in three box office smashes: Ace Ventura: Pet Detective, The Mask and Dumb and Dumber.
It led to more comedy performances in Batman Forever, Liar Liar and Bruce Almighty.
But Carrey didn't strictly limit himself to comedy, earning critical acclaim for serious roles in The Truman Show, Man on the Moon and Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind.
In 2004, he admitted to suffering from depression but didn't let it slow him down.
Since the turn of the century, Carrey has starred in How the Grinch Stole Christmas, Lemony Snicket's A Series of Unfortunate Events, The Number 23, Yes Man and Anchorman 2: The Legend Continues.
Carrey reprised his Dumb and Dumber role as mop-topped, chip-toothed idiot Lloyd in the 2014 sequel.
His latest project Kidding, a dark comedy-drama series where Carrey plays a children's television entertainer dealing with family issues, aired on streaming service Stan in September.
The 57-year-old has twice divorced and has a daughter with first wife Melissa Womer.
