Jim Carrey Nearly Quit THE GRINCH After Torturous Makeup and Panic Attacks and He Offered to Return His $20 Million Payday

The 25th anniversary celebration of How the Grinch Stole Christmas has brought a flood of wild behind the scenes stories back into the spotlight, and Jim Carrey has now added even more jaw dropping details about just how brutal his experience was under the iconic Grinch makeup.

The film remains one of the most recognizable holiday movies ever made. It dominated the box office in 2000 with a massive $346 million. Behind the scenes though, Carrey endured a process so intense that he nearly walked away from the project entirely and offered to return his $20 million payday.

Legendary makeup artist Rick Baker, who won an Oscar for his work on the film, revealed that the studio initially pushed for a drastically simpler approach.

“The studio said, ‘We’re paying Jim $20 million, and we want to see him. Just paint him green,’” Baker said. “But it’s not ‘How the Green Jim Carrey Stole Christmas.’ It’s How the Grinch Stole Christmas. He should look like a fantasy character.

“There was a popular movie website at the time, Ain’t It Cool News, and the guy who ran it was a fan of my work, and I contacted him,” Baker continued. “I said, ‘Listen, Universal wants to paint Jim Carrey green. I feel it’s a major mistake.

“I did a test on myself of what I think it should look like. Can you somehow say that you saw this test and that Universal is making a major mistake and they don’t know what the fuck they’re talking about?’

“And he did. And it was outrageous responses from everybody. ‘What the hell is wrong with these people at Universal? I don’t want to see green Jim Carrey. I want to see a Grinch!’ Blah, blah, blah. So they finally caved in.”

Carrey was fully committed to becoming the creature audiences knew from the book. That choice came with a price he didn’t expect. He described one of the biggest physical challenges as the construction of the Grinch’s nose.

“When it came down to actually designing the Grinch to look like the Grinch, they had to put the tip of my nose on the top of the bridge of the Grinch’s nose,” he explained. “So, all of the rest of it was covered and I couldn’t breathe through my nose, and they had a real problem trying to get holes in the mask that could allow me to breathe through my nose. Ultimately, I ended up mouth breathing through the entire movie.”

Everything about the suit made things harder. Carrey continued, “The suit was made of unnervingly itchy yak hair that drove me insane all day long. I had ten inch long fingers, so I couldn’t scratch myself or touch my face or do anything. I had teeth that I had to find a way to speak around, and I had full contact lenses that covered the entire eyeball, and I could only see a tiny tunnel in front of me.”

Producer Brian Grazer revealed that they offered to digitally enhance Carrey’s eyes, but he insisted on the practical route, which only made the experience rougher.

Carrey admitted, “It was something that I asked for that I can’t blame on anyone but myself. You’ve got to be careful what you ask for. You don’t think about it when you see an actor do a part that is about excruciating pain or whatever. But that actor has to live in that feeling. They don’t just go home and suddenly stop feeling it.”

Director Ron Howard recalled how tough things became during the early days of filming. Carrey began suffering from panic attacks because of how suffocating the prosthetics felt.

Howard said Carrey “started having panic attacks” and added, “I would see him lying down on the floor in between setups with a brown paper bag. Literally on the floor. He was miserable.”

Things escalated fast. After the very first day which required eight hours in the chair Carrey threatened to quit. Howard remembered, “He was ready to give his $20 million back! I mean, he was sincere.”

The production ended up bringing in someone with a very specific and unusual skill set to help. “Richard Marcinko was a gentleman that trained CIA officers and special ops people how to endure torture,” Carrey said. “He gave me a litany of things that I could do when I began to spiral.

“Like punch myself in the leg as hard as I can. Have a friend that I trust and punch him in the arm. Eat everything in sight. Changing patterns in the room. If there’s a TV on when you start to spiral, turn it off and turn the radio on. Smoke cigarettes as much as possible.

“There are pictures of me as the Grinch sitting in a director’s chair with a long cigarette holder. I had to have the holder, because the yak hair would catch on fire if it got too close.”

Carrey then learned who exactly had been guiding him. “Later on I found out that the gentleman that trained me to endure the Grinch also founded SEAL Team Six,” he added.

“But what really helped me through the makeup process, which they eventually pulled down to about three hours, was the Bee Gees. I listened through the makeup process to the entire Bee Gees catalogue. Their music is so joyful. I’ve never met Barry Gibb, but I want to thank him.”

Even with all the chaos, Carrey looks back fondly enough that he recently talked about returning to the role someday with new technology making the process far easier.

“Oh, gosh, you know, if we could figure out the Grinch,” Carrey told ComicBook last year. “The thing about it is, on the day, I do that with a ton of makeup and can hardly breathe. It was an extremely excruciating process.

“The children were in my mind all the time. ‘It’s for the kids. It’s for the kids. It’s for the kids.’ And now, with motion capture and things like that, I could be free to do other things. Anything is possible in this world.”

The experience wasn’t only hard for Carrey. Special effects makeup artist Kazuhiro Tsuji, who applied the prosthetics daily alongside Baker, once admitted the process pushed him to seek therapy.

“In the makeup trailer he just suddenly stands up and looks in the mirror, and pointing on his chin, he goes, ‘This color is different from what you did yesterday,’” Tsuji said. “I was using the same color I used yesterday. He says, ‘Fix it.’ And okay, you know, I ‘fixed’ it. Every day was like that.”

25 years later the film still holds a firm place in holiday movie history. Hearing how far Carrey went to bring the Grinch to life only makes the performance more impressive. The makeup may have been brutal but the result became one of the most memorable character transformations ever put on screen.

Via: Vulture