This post deals with mental health and suicide and might be triggering for some readers.
Jim Carrey's form of comedy is unlike any other.
His energetic slapstick humour and larger-than-life characters are so over-the-top and ridiculous that on paper, they shouldn't work. But they do. And in the 90s, Carrey's form of comedy changed comedy.
It's hard to overstate Carrey's meteoric rise from Toronto impressionist to Hollywood's most bankable comedic actor in the 90s.
The success of his first major movie, Ace Ventura: Pet Detective, accelerated the genre's rise, which continued with The Mask and Dumb and Dumber.
It also saw Carrey paid handsomely: by 1995, he was earning eight figures per film, putting his salaries on par with previously much-more respected, 'high-brow' actors like Tom Hanks. With 1996's The Cable Guy, he became the first actor in history to earn $20 million for a single film.
He branched into more 'serious' roles, earning himself award nominations and Golden Globes, playing the title character in The Truman Show, Andy Kaufmann in Man on the Moon and the lead role in cult classic Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind.