Jim Carrey Gained 40 Pounds for A Movie He Never Appeared In
Jim Carrey has proven time and again that he’s an extremely committed actor, whether it means undergoing disfiguring dental surgery, or deciding to act like an asshole 24/7 because that’s what the ghost of Andy Kaufman demanded. One time he even drastically altered his body for a movie that he never actually appeared in.
The Farrelly Brothers’ 2012 reboot of The Three Stooges starred three actors who weren’t actually the Three Stooges: Chris Diamantopoulos, Sean Hayes and Will Sasso played Moe, Larry and Curly respectively. Also Larry David was cast as a cranky nun for some reason.
Deciding which actors should revive The Three Stooges for modern audiences was a long, surprisingly unhinged process. At one point, Phil Hartman was trying to get a Stooges movie made. “I told my agent, ‘I gotta be Moe!’ Just throw a Beatle wig on me and I am Moe!” Hartman revealed to an interviewer in 1996. For the other roles, he suggested Jon Lovitz for Larry and Chris Farley for Curly.
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When the Farrelly Brothers became attached to the project years later, their initial choices to play the iconic trio were Benicio del Toro as Moe, Sean Penn as Larry and Jim Carrey as Curly.
Obviously del Toro and Penn aren’t generally known as comedic actors. Sure, Penn got his big break playing Jeff Spicoli in Fast Times at Ridgemont High, but that hardly seems like a rock solid qualification to play one of the most famous slapstick comedians in pop-culture history. Not to mention the fact that he seems to be an unrelentingly humorless stick-in-the-mud in real life.
As for Carrey, he reportedly gained “more than 40 pounds” to play the ample Curly, but then randomly dropped out. “We never heard from him,” Peter Farrelly told The Los Angeles Times. When asked if Carrey had even bothered to give the directors a call letting them know that he wouldn’t be playing Curly after all, Farrelly responded: “Now that would have been nice.”
Carrey later clarified to MTV that he quit the film out of concerns for his health. “I don’t really want to do anything halfway,” Carrey explained, “and I don’t feel like a fat suit does it.” In addition to the 40 pounds he’d already packed on, Carrey felt that he would still need to gain an additional 30 to 40 pounds to properly play Curly.
“When you’re De Niro in your 20s or early 30s, you can kind of come back from that,” Carrey reasoned. “It’s a tough thing to come back from when you’re upwards of 30. Your body can’t carry it, or you can have a cardiac arrest.”
Carrey had other concerns too: “Put that with Sean Penn and Benicio Del Toro slapping me in the head all day long, and someone will lose an eye. It won’t be good.”
Penn also pulled out of The Three Stooges, claiming that he wanted “to concentrate on his charitable efforts in Haiti.” Moving in a new direction, the Farrellys then considered casting Andy Samberg as Larry and Johnny Knoxville as Moe because he’s “a real-life stooge.”
Despite this exhaustive search, from all accounts, the Farrellys never once considered just casting the Full House guys.
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