Jim Carrey Really Wanted a Role in This Steven Spielberg Blockbuster
Before Ace Ventura: Pet Detective, before Dumb and Dumber and before The Mask, Jim Carrey was on the verge of becoming a huge movie star. At least, he would have gotten there if he’d landed the role he coveted in a massive Steven Spielberg movie. “He auditioned for a very long time. He was really into it,” the film’s casting director, Janet Hirshenson, told SYFY Wire, as reported by Far Out. “I think he really wanted the role. He was good, it was a totally different way to go. I remember he came in very enthusiastically.”
The film Carrey was trying so desperately to land? One of Spielberg’s biggest hits, 1993’s Jurassic Park. While the rubber-faced comic could probably do some pretty hilarious Tyrannosaurus rex imitations, Carrey was angling for the part of chaos theorist Ian Malcolm.
Would he have played it straight? Of course not. His audition definitely delivered “the Jim Carrey approach,” remembered Hirshenson. “So yeah, it would have been a little more comedic.”
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Unfortunately for Carrey, another actor nailed his audition for the film. “(Jeff) Goldblum came in and, of course, blew me away,” she said. “He’s Goldblum, nobody’s like him. I think Steven pretty quickly also knew that was the one.”
Goldblum was funny as well but with a completely different vibe. “Jeff was comedic in his dry, Jeff Goldblum-y sort of way … it becomes a different way to go,” explained Hirshenson. “By that time, I think we were pretty much geared into Jeff Goldblum.”
Carrey and Spielberg still haven’t worked together, but they came close more than once. The two were attached to team up for 2000’s Meet the Parents, but the project got killed by none other than Spielberg’s wife, Kate Capshaw. Why did she squash the collab?
“My wife says I’m not funny enough!” Spielberg told Total Film. “She read the script. She said, ‘You’re not directing this movie — give it to a director who does comedy well.’ She doesn’t mind when I have comic moments in my movies, like when Tom Cruise chases his eyeballs towards a drain in Minority Report, but I'm not allowed to do an outright comedy!”
The third near-collaboration came when Carrey agreed to star in a remake of The Secret Life of Walter Mitty. Ron Howard was first up to direct, but he left the project. Enter Spielberg, eager to work with Carrey after Meet the Parents fizzled. He was officially attached to direct, but once the film got stuck in rewrite hell, Spielberg moved on to Munich and War of the Worlds. Carrey eventually abandoned ship as well, leaving the title role for Ben Stiller, the guy who replaced him in Meet the Parents.
Losing two plum roles to Stiller must have hurt. But at least it wasn’t Jeff Goldblum.
