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Jim Carrey: Living Color
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Jim Carrey began to work occasionally in television and small parts in movies, which eventually led to a friendship with Damon Wayans. Wayans's brother, Keenen Ivory Wayans, was in the process of putting together a sketch comedy show for Fox called In Living Color, and hired Carrey to be a cast member. Carrey's unusual characters and on-screen behavior caught America's attention.
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It's said that long before Jim Carrey made it BIG, and before he even appeared on "In Living Color," he walked up to the Hollywood Hills one day. There, he wrote a check to himself, and put it in his wallet. The amount on the check was for ten million dollars. In the memo he wrote in, "For services rendered." Today as most of you already know, Jim Carrey makes a minimum of twenty-million dollars per film.
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The Jim Carrey family fell on hard times and were forced to move to Scarborough, a Toronto suburb, where they took security and janitorial jobs in the Titan Wheels factory. Carrey began working eight-hour shifts each day after school. Eventually, the Carrey family escaped life at Titan by living on a relative's lawn out of the family Volkswagen van until they could move back downtown.
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Carrey made his film debut in a minor role in Rubberface (1983), which was known as Introducing...Janet at the time of release. Later that year, he won the leading role in Damian Lee's Canadian skiing comedy Copper Mountain, which included his impersonation of Sammy Davis Jr. Since the film had a less than one hour runtime consisting largely of musical performances by Rita Coolidge and Rompin' Ronnie Hawkins, it was not considered a genuine feature film. A few years later, Carrey saw his first major starring role in the dark comedy Once Bitten, in the role of Mark Kendall, a teen virgin pursued by a 400-year old female vampire (played by Lauren Hutton). After supporting roles in films such as Peggy Sue Got Married (1986), Earth Girls Are Easy (1988), and The Dead Pool (1988), Carrey did not experience true stardom until starring in the 1994 comedy Ace Ventura: Pet Detective, which premiered only months before In Living Color ended its run. The film was panned by critics, and earned Carrey a 1995 Golden Raspberry Award nomination as Worst New Star.[9]
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Around the time of the family’s fall Carrey made his debut as a stand-up comic. Dressed by his mother in a polyester suit and carrying a ventriloquist’s dummy, he appeared at the first Yuk Yuk’s comedy club in Toronto. It was a disaster, mercifully ended by a distraught Mark Breslin yelling, “Enough! Enough! Get off the stage!” Breslin, who can’t recall that first appearance, was more impressed when Carrey came calling a couple of years later. Seventeen and almost desperate to make a living, he offered a much more polished show.
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Carrey continued performing in small character roles in film and television, which eventually led to a friendship with fellow comedian Damon Wayans. The two co-starred as aliens in 1989's Earth Girls are Easy. When Wayans' brother Keenen were putting together a sketch comedy show for Fox called In Living Color, Carrey was hired as a token cast member. His unusual characters, including mannish female bodybuilder Vera de Milo and the masochistic safety inspector Fire Marshall Bill Burns (whose dangerous, ill-advised "safety tips" were the target of censors and television watchdog groups who saw Carrey's performance as Fire Marshall Bill as something that younger viewers would see as harmless fun and try to imitate), as well his on-screen behavior amazingly caught America's (and Hollywood's) attention.
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Living Color