Jim Carrey on Identity and the Character He Created

Watch this. I don't exist. So, uh, they're all characters that I played, including Jim Carrey, including Joel Barish, including any of those things.

They're all characters. Jim Carrey was a less, uh, intentional character- Right ... because I thought I was just building something that people would like, but it was a character. I played the guy that was free from concern so that people who watched me would be free from concern.

If Jim Carrey spent years slipping messages into his interviews, it's because he knew exactly what could happen to him, and he wasn't wrong.

He's one of the few who said all of this out in the open, on camera, with a smile, like hiding the truth inside a joke was the only way to say it without disappearing. Seeing that, you start to understand what gets really strange.

In the clip you just watched, he literally says he doesn't exist, that Jim Carrey is a character, that he built it so people would look the other way.

He was playing someone free from all worry, so you could feel that way too.

That's not a philosophical reflection, that's a mission statement.

And for years, he did the same thing off-camera.

Bizarre appearances, interviews where he talked about control, erased identity, people pulling the strings, always with that smile, always just vague enough that nobody took it seriously.

Today, when we see Jim Carrey, we wonder if he's still the same person.

Yet the connection between what he was trying to say back then and who he is now explains a lot. The real question isn't why he stopped talking.

It's what happened between the moment he was speaking and the moment he vanished.