'I spent 24 hours alone on a mountain and saw God': Jim Carrey on spirituality, comedy and depression

'I spent 24 hours alone on a mountain and saw God': Jim Carrey on spirituality, comedy and depression

What big feet you have: Jim Carrey at post-Oscars party

Parading around a post-Oscars party, wearing giant feet and tiny angel wings, Jim Carrey certainly knows how to stand out from the crowd.

And meeting the comic actor, he is equally larger than life as he explains that the unusual outfit choice was “part of his awkward spiritual journey”.

From the sound of it, it has been quite a journey already.

Carrey’s moods change unpredictably â€" telling jokes and laughing maniacally one minute, and lapsing into introspection and metaphysical self-analysis the next.

He tells me: “It was my reaction to public events because, believe it or not, I’m a shy person and I find gala-type events to be a bit like being hit over and over with bags of oranges.

"It’s an intense energy I’m not comfortable with, so I try to make it into something artistic I can feel good about.

“I feel a lot of the time like I’ve got tiny little wings and giant feet and I want to get off the Earth into a spiritual place, but I’m grounded all the time by my own flaws.”

That is one of the reasons the 51-year-old went on a “vision quest” in Arizona with the Lakota Indians where he was left stranded on a mountain-top in sweltering heat for 24 hours with only a tiny knife to ward off wild animals and snakes.

But, he says, although he was terrified and thought he was going to die, he eventually found what he was seeking in a vision.

He tells the story in all seriousness and it is clear he is totally sincere in his beliefs.

"I didn’t plan on it,” he says.

Jim Carrey in The Truman Show

 

“I just went to a spa and I met a guy who was connected to the tribe and he told me about this vision quest which they don’t let outsiders on.

“But I went and talked with the chief and he knew my heart was in the right place, so he decided that I could do it.

“I fasted for four days, I spent time in a sweat lodge and then they came in the middle of the night with a pick-up truck and blindfolded me and drove me to the top of this sacred mountain where they’d had these vision quests for a thousand years.

“They left me in a little 7ft circle with a blanket and only a tiny knife to fight off cougars, mountain lions, rattlesnakes, ­scorpions and whatever else was there.

"It was so hot it felt like 150 degrees and I thought I was dying at one point.

“I had 12 ounces of water to last me 24 hours and I watched the mountain all day, wondering what they meant by the visions.

"What happens is the shadows change and they talk to you and when you ask questions you get answers and that was happening.

“Then at night I got tired of standing and I lay down on this little Indian blanket and I was really frightened.

"The coyotes were howling and the place was full of rattlesnakes, and I actually spoke out loud and said, ‘God I’m scared, be with me’.

“And at that point the mountain range that was above me became the perfect shape of a man laying on his back beside me.

"All the fear left my body and I lay there thinking, ‘This is really happening. I’m actually seeing God and I can’t believe it. I’m so lucky’.

“And I wasn’t scared any more and then later the moon came up and changed the shadows and the face turned and was smiling at me, and I was just in complete bliss. I was as light as a feather.

“The next day when the chief came I asked him if he had seen the man lying on his back and he said he had never seen it.”

Jim Carrey in Bruce Almighty

Carrey is talking in Las Vegas, promoting his latest film The Incredible Burt Wonderstone, a comedy in which he plays a dark and dangerous street magician who overshadows the superstar magician Burt Wonderstone, played by Steve Carell.

The film co-stars Tony Soprano actor James Gandolfini who sometimes, says Carrey, got a little carried away.

“He was fun and I love him but he’s used to working in a much more dramatic setting, so every once in a while he’d start cursing and stuff because he forgot a line and there was a bunch of children around and we’d have to go, ‘Hey, hey man, it’s not Raging Bull here, you know’.”

For years Carrey battled depression, gaining a reputation for being moody and unpredictable on set.

But since eschewing prescription drugs and embracing a healthy diet â€" “I don’t eat wheat, dairy, sugar, soda, coffee, do drugs, alcohol or tobacco” â€" the actor is seeing the brighter side of life.

He confesses, however, that he sometimes “loses his place”.

As he puts it: “I veer off the road every once in a while and take the off-ramp into a bad neighbourhood and live there for a while, but it’s not usually very long.

“Everything starts to go wrong and you can only stay in that mode for a short time if you’re awake and sober and looking at the universe.”

Although his career is on a firm footing, his personal life remains ­unsettled.

His first marriage to Melissa Womer â€" mother of his 26-year-old daughter, Jane â€" dissolved after six years.

A mid-1990s relationship with actress Lauren Holly ended a year after they married.

His 18-month romance with Renee Zellweger fizzled out in 2000 and three years ago he broke up with partner of five years, actress and model Jenny McCarthy.

Since then he has dated model-actress Anchal Joseph, 25 years his junior, but he is, he says, “very single”.

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“But everything in my life comes to me for a reason and to step me up to another level, so every single person I come in contact with, and certainly the relationships I’ve had, have taught me and brought me a little bit closer to realising what I want and what I don’t â€" and teaching me the value of love.

“I don’t know if I’ll ever find somebody I can hang with for the rest of my life but I don’t regret anybody and I absolutely value whatever it was that took me to where I am now, which is a good place.”

Canadian-born Carrey credits his accountant father, who died of lung cancer in 1994, for making him a comedian and cannot talk about him without tears coming to his eyes.

“I get all emotional because he was a super-amazing human being,” he says.

“He was funny and strange, and he was the one who took me to my first comedy club. He was always in the front row, going, ‘go man, go’.”

His first attempt at stand-up in a local club when he was 15 was a flop but his knack for impressions soon made him a sensation.

He moved to Los Angeles and landed a regular spot in the TV show In Living Colour.

Hollywood came calling and roles in movies Ace Ventura and The Mask made him a star.

He went on to play the scene-stealing Riddler in Batman Forever then tried his hand at serious roles such as The Cable Guy â€" “I should have got an Academy Award for that”, he says now.

He is a man confident of his talents and states matter-of-factly: “I definitely have something, like I wrote into Bruce Almighty, some kind of divine spark.

"We all have that to a certain extent but it gets covered up with fear and self-loathing, but I think I’ve held on to something that people want to see.

“I maintain that what I do is cool and I work hard, and I have inspiration, but I always believe that people want to see me and whatever that thing is that I haven’t let go of or lost belief in.

"That’s the difference between somebody who’s in a movie and someone you go to see in a movie.”