Though 2000’s How the Grinch Stole Christmas ended up being a huge hit, the experience of making it was not a fun one for Jim Carrey. In fact, the comedian came very close to walking away from the production early on because of the costume and the grueling makeup process.
“The first day in makeup took eight hours,” Carrey told Vulture in 2025. “And I went into the trailer and asked Ron [Howard] and Brian [Grazer] to come in, and I told them that I wouldn’t be able to do the movie and I was quitting.”
Carrey even offered to pay back all the money he’d gotten for the role—with interest. Things got so bad that Carrey started having panic attacks in between takes. Howard remembered seeing Carrey lying on the floor breathing into a brown paper bag at one point. Finally, Grazer found a man named Richard Marcinko, who’d trained CIA officers and special-ops people to endure torture (he later developed SEAL Team Six).
Jim Carrey Nearly Quit ‘How the Grinch Stole Christmas’ Because the Makeup Was So Brutal
Marcinko was very instrumental in getting Carrey through the movie. “He gave me a litany of things that I could do when I began to spiral,” Carrey explained. Among Marcinko’s suggestions for Carrey were punching himself in the leg as hard as he could, punching a friend in the arm, and smoking cigarettes as much as possible.
“There are pictures of me as the Grinch sitting in a director’s chair with a long cigarette holder,” Carrey recalled. “I had to have a holder, because the yak hair would catch on fire if it got too close.”
Interestingly, another thing Carrey credits with putting him at ease was listening to the Bee Gees. Carrey said that they eventually got the makeup process down to just three hours, and he spent that time going through the entire Bee Gees catalog. According to Carrey, their “joyful” music really helped take the edge off.
“I’ve never met [Bee Gees singer] Barry Gibb, but I want to thank him,” Carrey joked.
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