James Eugene Redmond "Jim" Carrey (born January 17, 1962) is a Canadian-American film actor and comedian. He is known for his manic, slapstick performances in comedy films such as Ace Ventura: Pet Detective; Ace Ventura: When Nature Calls; The Mask; Dumb and Dumber; Me, Myself & Irene; Fun with Dick and Jane; The Cable Guy; Liar Liar; Bruce Almighty; and Batman Forever. Carrey has also achieved critical success in dramatic roles in films such as The Truman Show, Man on the Moon, and Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. He also provides the voice for Horton in the animated feature film Horton Hears a Who!, released March 14, 2008. The film was his first animated feature role. He has won two Golden Globe Awards.

Carrey was born in Perth, the son of Maria (née Oram), a homemaker, and Mark Carrey, a musician and accountant. He has three older siblings, John, Patricia, and Rita. The family was Catholic[ and of part French Canadian ancestry (as the original surname was Carré).After the family moved to Scarborough, Ontario when Carrey was 14, he attended Blessed Trinity Catholic School in North York for two years, before enrolling at Agincourt Collegiate Institute, Scarborough's oldest high school for another year, and then briefly attended Northview Heights Secondary School for the remainder of his high school career (3 years in grade 10).

Carrey lived in Burlington, Ontario, for eight years and attended Aldershot High School. In a Hamilton Spectator interview (February 2007), Carrey remarks that "if his career in show business hadn't panned out he would probably be working today in Hamilton, Ontario at the Dofasco steel mill." When looking across the Burlington Bay towards Hamilton he could see the mills and thought "those were where the great jobs were.". He already had experience working in a science testing facility in Richmond Hill, Ontario, and was somewhat resigned to that career path.[citation needed]

In 1979, under the management of Leatrice Spevack, Carrey started doing stand-up comedy at Yuk Yuk's in Toronto, where he rose to become a headliner in February 1981, shortly after his 19th birthday. One reviewer in the Toronto Star raved that Carrey was "a genuine star coming to life."[6] In the early 1980s, Carrey moved to Los Angeles and started working at The Comedy Store, where he was noticed by comedian Rodney Dangerfield. Dangerfield liked Carrey's performance so much that he signed Carrey to open Dangerfield's tour performances.

Carrey then turned his attention to the film and television industries, auditioning to be a cast member for 1980–1981 season of NBC's Saturday Night Live. Carrey was not selected for the position (although he did host the show in May 1996). Joel Schumacher had him audition for a role in D.C. Cab, though in the end, nothing ever came of it. His first lead role on television was Skip Tarkenton, a young animation producer on NBC's short-lived The Duck Factory, airing from April 12, 1984, to July 11, 1984, and offering a behind-the-scenes look at the crew that produced a children's cartoon.

Carrey continued working in smaller film and television roles, which led to a friendship with fellow comedian Damon Wayans, who co-starred with Carrey as a fellow extraterrestrial in 1989's Earth Girls Are Easy. When Wayans' brother Keenen began developing a sketch comedy show for Fox called In Living Color, Carrey was hired as a cast member, whose unusual characters included masochistic safety inspector Fire Marshall Bill (whose dangerous "safety tips" were the target of censors and watchdog groups who saw the character as a dangerous example for naive younger viewers), and masculine female bodybuilder Vera de Milo. His on-screen antics caught the eye of Hollywood.

Carrey has been married twice, first to former actor and Comedy Store waitress Melissa Womer, with whom he has a daughter, Jane Erin Carrey (b. September 6, 1987 in Los Angeles County). They were married on March 28, 1987, and were officially divorced in late 1995. After his separation from Womer in 1994, Carrey began dating his Dumb and Dumber co-star Lauren Holly. They were married on September 23, 1996; the marriage lasted less than a year. Carrey dated actress Renée Zellweger, whom he met on the set of Me, Myself & Irene, but their relationship ended in a broken engagement in December 2000. During 2004, Jim dated his massage therapist Tiffany O. Silver. In the May 2006 issue of Playboy Magazine (p. 48), it was mentioned that he has dated model Anine Bing. In December 2005, Carrey began dating actress/model Jenny McCarthy. The pair have since denied engagement rumors. They did not make their relationship public until June 2006. She announced on The Ellen DeGeneres Show on April 2, 2008 that the two are now living together, but have no plans to marry, as they do not need a "piece of paper".