Could you imagine Dumb and Dumber with a couple of Amigos? How about
Ghost Rider and Dracula? Could a certain SNL legend have been
The Cable Guy? These are the what-if casting tales of Jim Carrey movies.
It's hard to imagine anyone besides Jim Carrey playing Miami pet detective Ace Ventura,
the role that shot him to box office stardom in February 1994. However, at the time that producers
were casting the role, Carrey actually wasn't the first one they approached. As it turns out,
Rick Moranis of Honey, I Shrunk the Kids was offered the part, but he ultimately passed.
Moranis had established a successful acting career during the '80s, in the likes of Ghostbusters,
Spaceballs, and Little Shop of Horrors. But by the time he was courted to play Ace Ventura,
he was intentionally taking fewer roles after his wife Ann Belsky died of breast cancer in
February 1991. By 1997, he'd essentially retired from acting to raise his two kids,
although he occasionally did voiceover work and other creative projects.
Moranis ultimately never regretted taking this hiatus. In 2015,
he told The Hollywood Reporter that he looked back fondly at working with
the interesting people he met during the height of his showbiz career. As he put it,
"I have absolutely no regrets whatsoever. My life is wonderful."
After Rick Moranis passed on Ace Ventura, producers looked to Jim Carrey's In Living Color
castmate David Allen Grier, which Grier revealed during a 2019 appearance on The Howard Stern Show.
He also noted that they considered Rob Schneider, who was a cast member on Saturday Night Live at
the time. After reading the script, though, Grier didn't see a box office hit, so he passed. Besides
Moranis and Grier, the producers also considered Whoopi Goldberg, Judd Nelson, and Alan Rickman.
Once Carrey got involved, he helped shape the character and script alongside writer-director
Tom Shadyac. As Carrey explained to the Los Angeles Times in 1994,
"From the beginning of my involvement, I said that the character had to be rock 'n' roll. [...] I
wanted to be unstoppably ridiculous, and they let me go wild. [...] This movie was going to
either be something that people really went for, or it was going to ruin me completely."
"Alrighty then!"
Lauren Holly began her acting career on TV in the '80s on a couple episodes of the cop
drama Hill Street Blues before making her way to the soap opera All My Children. Jim Carrey
lobbied for her to play the part of Melissa in Ace Ventura, but she turned that down because
of scheduling conflicts with her ongoing role on the show Picket Fences. Melissa was
ultimately played by Courteney Cox instead. Then in 1995, Holly admitted to Entertainment Weekly,
"I kicked myself when it came out."
Holly eventually got another chance to co-star with Carrey later that year in
Dumb and Dumber, and she said of that movie,
"The minute I heard it was Jim and Jeff,
I definitely wanted to be a part of it… I think my hardest job is just
to keep a straight face and not ruin any of the takes — believe me, that's tough."
Holly and Carrey fell in love while making Dumb and Dumber and got married in 1996, after Carrey's
divorce from his first marriage was finalized. Alas, their union lasted less than a year.
Jim Carrey, Jeff Daniels, and Lauren Holly were the perfect stars for Dumb and Dumber,
but they weren't the lineup that the studio originally envisioned. As recounted by E! News,
New Line Cinema felt that they were taking a chance in letting the novice Farrelly brothers
direct their own screenplay, so they wanted to be closely involved in the casting process.
Martin Short was reportedly New Line's first pick for Lloyd, but he ultimately turned down
the part. He hasn't spoken publicly about that decision, but Vulture speculated that he may have
been apprehensive about starring in the debut comedy of two directors with no track record.
Bobby Farrelly later told The Hollywood Reporter that they were trying to cast
the movie for a couple of years, but they kept getting turned down
by everyone. Peter Farrelly added in that same interview that in reality many of the
actors weren't actually being informed of the offers by their agents. As he put it,
"[It's] so hard to tell how many actually passed, but we were told 100."
"So you're telling me there's a chance?"
Martin Short wasn't the only big-time comedian to turn down the Farrelly brothers,
or even the only big-time comedian with "Martin '' in his name, as his longtime
collaborator and friend Steve Martin also declined the role of Dumb and Dumber's
Lloyd. His work in films like The Jerk and Three Amigos! made him an obvious choice,
but he was seriously in demand at the time, so the competition to cast him was fierce.
Eventually, though, one of the producers got a script over to Jim Carrey, and he
responded favorably. As Peter Farrelly recalled to The Hollywood Reporter,
"When we met with him he was like, he got it exactly like we got it,
and so we thought this guy would be perfect for it."
When Carrey signed on, Ace Ventura: Pet Detective hadn't come out yet,
so contract negotiations became an issue when their star re-negotiated his salary
after scoring big at the box office earlier in the year. After locking down Carrey as Lloyd,
the focus was then shifted to figuring out who would play Harry. New Line reportedly wasn't
initially interested in casting Jeff Daniels. As Bobby Farrelly noted to The Hollywood Reporter,
"Daniels was not the obvious choice because he hadn't done any,
you know, out-and-out comedies before that."
After they read together, Carrey lobbied for Daniels to get the role,
and the latter accepted the offer, against his agent's advice and at a discounted pay rate.
Before Carrey and Daniels, and before everyone else they considered, the Farrellys reportedly
originally envisioned Nicolas Cage and Gary Oldman as Lloyd and Harry in Dumb and Dumber.
Cage confirmed this in 2012, when he told the Huffington Post that he was indeed in talks with
Carrey, whom he starred alongside in 1986's Peggy Sue Got Married. But Cage ultimately turned the
role down so that he could instead star in Leaving Las Vegas, for which he ended up winning an Oscar.
Years later, Cage had another opportunity to book a part that eventually went to Carrey
again. In 2017, director Michel Gondry told The Daily Beast that he approached
Cage to play Joel in 2004's Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind before
ultimately choosing to cast Carrey against type. After Cage became an Oscar winner,
the competition to cast him in an independent film was quite stiff. Gondry also told Vanity
Fair that watching Carrey on the set of 2003's Bruce Almighty convinced him that
he could handle the role, because he saw something lonely behind his comedic facade.
"That's high praise."
Robin Williams was all set to play the Joker in 1989's Batman, but he ultimately lost the
part to Jack Nicholson, who went on to make quite the impression as the Clown Prince of
Crime. Williams felt that Warner Bros. had used him as bait to lure Nicholson,
and he was disappointed to lose out on a role he believed he would have been perfect for.
Despite that setback, he maintained hopes of eventually playing a Batman villain.
In a 2015 interview with The Hollywood Reporter,
Batman Forever screenwriter Lee Batchler revealed that they actually wrote the
Riddler with Williams' voice in mind. And back in 1993, Entertainment Weekly
reported that Williams was excited to read the script. But he eventually turned down
the role without offering any public comment about why he declined. As an insider told EW,
"He believed the character was too intellectual and not as comedic as
the Riddler played by Frank Gorshin on the TV series."
Others suggested that Williams was wary of Warner Bros. after
what happened with the Joker. Either way, after he turned down the role,
Carrey was eventually cast as The Riddler. But Williams was still interested in playing the
character in Christopher Nolan's version of the franchise, telling Empire in 2012,
"I'd play The Riddler in the next Batman,
although it'd be hard to top Heath as the villain. And I'm a little hairy for tights."
Believe it or not, Chris Farley was the first actor attached to 1996's The Cable
Guy before Jim Carrey came into the picture. As reported by Variety, after Columbia Pictures
bought the script, they cast Farley to star in the title role. Unfortunately,
though, Paramount Pictures still had the comic actor signed to a two-movie deal,
and he had to film Black Sheep to fulfill that contract. Farley and Columbia agreed that he
could film The Cable Guy after finishing out his stint as a cast member on Saturday Night Live.
"Oh! Son of a, that's gonna leave a mark."
But Farley ultimately dropped out of the project because he
reportedly didn't want to be locked into anything so far in the future. Sadly,
both his career and life were cut short when he died at the age of 33 in December 1997.
Carrey's turn in The Cable Guy wound up being a performance that changed Hollywood forever.
He was on a career high coming off his multiple hits in 1994, and he negotiated a $20 million
payday for the dark comedy. As reported by Variety, he was the first actor to command
a salary of that size. Looking back in 2021, Variety deals reporter Mike Fleming Jr. noted,
"Every major top-of-the-line movie star got a $5 million raise."
At the time, Carrey's payday was bigger news than The Cable Guy itself, which
failed to really click at the box office, though it's since become a cult favorite.
1998's The Truman Show predicted the shift towards our reality TV culture
with a bold story about a man who doesn't know that he's the star of a show about his
own life. The movie gave Jim Carrey a rare opportunity to take on a more serious role,
which would lead to more dramatic opportunities down the road.
"Oh, and in case I don't see you, good afternoon, good evening, and good night."
As reported by Variety, Carrey wanted the opportunity to branch out and show his range
so badly that he even took a pay cut, making only $12 million instead of his typical $20
million fee. Director Peter Weir was so set on Carrey taking the lead role that
he waited a year to film because the actor was busy making Liar Liar and The Cable Guy.
Although this might make it sound like Weir knew exactly who he wanted in his cast,
there was still a last-minute shake-up, as Dennis Hopper was actually originally set up
to play the antagonist Christof. But, as reported by the Los Angeles Times,
after just one day of shooting, Hopper left the production due to "creative differences"
and was later replaced by Ed Harris. As Harris recalled to The Hollywood Reporter in 2021,
"They were shooting a scene in Malibu, and I live in Malibu. So I drove up the
coast to meet with Peter. We talked. It was a Friday. I think I started work on Monday."
In April 2010, The Wrap reported that Ben Stiller was talking to director Noah
Baumbach about starring in the title role of the adaptation of the children's book
Mr. Popper's Penguins. Their interpretation of the project was a little bizarre and included an
entirely new storyline with football player Peyton Manning and his real estate agent.
Two months later, it was reported that Stiller had walked away from the role when
Baumbach ultimately passed on the project. It seemed that a big part of the appeal for
the actor was a chance to work with his frequent collaborator again. Afterwards,
the likes of Jack Black and Owen Wilson were on the short list of actors that
the studio was interested in casting, but Jim Carrey was at the top of their list.
Once Mark Waters came on board as the director, he called up Carrey
in the hopes that he would star. They'd been trying to work together for a while
and Carrey was the only person he could see in the role. As Waters told Entertainment Weekly,
"I got lucky. I asked for Jim and I got him."
Although Waters was thrilled to work with Carrey, the movie was ultimately
tepidly received by critics and didn't do very well at the box office either.