The 1001 faces of Jim Carrey, iconoclastic actor crowned at the 2026 César Awards

Published on 1 October 2025. Updated on 2 October 2025.

Jim Carrey, star of The Mask and sad clown to be awarded at the 2026 César ceremony

A legend has always surrounded clowns. Behind their makeup and hilarious posture, they are thought to be tragic figures. Jim Carrey, who will receive an Honorary César on February 27th, 2026, first emerged in the 1990s, making crowds laugh with his outrageous antics and made-up faces in The Mask (1994). He went on to star in a series of pure entertainment films. Whether in Ace Ventura: Pet Detective (1994), How the Grinch Stole Christmas (2000), or Dumb and Dumber (1994), his Tex Avery–style gimmicks and elastic funny faces had the entire world laughing.

But one day, the international joker no longer felt like laughing. Instead, he unveiled a rather serious, moving, and profound face in several cinematic works. The political satire The Truman Show (1998), the melancholic Man on the Moon (1999), and the poetic and sublime Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (2004), directed by Michel Gondry.

The French filmmaker who gave him his finest role, alongside Kate Winslet, never forgot him and later cast him in the Showtime series Kidding in 2018. Riding this new momentum, Jim Carrey then presented a documentary on the not-always-funny comedian Andy Kaufman at the Toronto Film Festival. Today, the actor’s humour leans more toward irony and the absurd than overt silliness.

An unpredictable slasher

There is more to Jim Carrey’s life than cinema. At 63, the actor has revealed another side of his personality as a painter and illustrator, completely consumed by his colourful, striking artworks, as showcased in a short film Jim Carrey: I Needed Color, directed by David L. Bushell and released online. Painting seems to have saved the actor after his wife’s suicide, Cathriona White, in 2015, for which he was tried for involuntary manslaughter in 2018. During his rare public appearances, the former comedian also slips into the role of surreal commentator.

Invited to a New York Fashion Week party in 2017, he told a baffled E!News reporter that the event was nothing more than a meaningless circus and that neither she nor he truly existed. “I wanted to find the most meaningless thing I could come to and join. And here I am. You got to admit it, it’s completely meaningless. (…) I don’t believe in icons. I don’t believe that you exist, but there is a wonderful fragrance in the air. (…) I believe we are a field of energy dancing for itself, and I don’t care,” Jim Carrey declared, somewhere between Jean-Claude Van Damme and Guy Debord…

https://youtu.be/-JmNKGfFj7w

A metaphysical troublemaker

Jim Carrey, who published his memoir Memoirs and Misinformation in 2021, used to be known and loved for his expressive face and elastic body he could twist in every direction. Today, his mind is what he wants to show the world. His interviews sound like strange life lessons. Fascinated by the figure of Christ and a devoted practitioner of transcendental meditation, he told CNN: “My soul is not contained within the limits of my body, my body is contained within the limitlessness of my soul.”

In an interview published by Le Monde, he took his musings even further: “Many people have interpreted what I went through as depression. But it has nothing to do with that. I began to take an interest in the idea of the Whole, rejecting more and more what is tied to individuality. My self gradually dissolved, through a series of little epiphanies. (…) I feel sadness, I feel joy, but these emotions don’t cling to me long enough to overwhelm me.” The mask seems to have finally fallen from one of the most deeply human souls in the City of Angels.

The César Awards ceremony will take place on February 27th, 2026, at the Olympia in Paris.