The Grinch’s defining characteristic is grumpiness – and it turns out playing the furry, Christmas-hating recluse didn’t have a very positive effect on Jim Carrey’s mood either. The actor has revealed he needed torture endurance training to survive the “horrendous” filming.


“The makeup took eight and a half hours. It was like being buried alive each day. On the first day I went back to my trailer, put my leg through the wall and told director Ron Howard I couldn’t do the movie,” Carrey tells Graham Norton on his BBC1 chat show tonight.

“So a guy that trained CIA operatives how to endure torture was brought in,” he continues. “That’s how I got through it.”

CIA training wasn’t enough to get him through the shoot, though. Carrey also reveals he relied on the soothing tones of the Bee Gees to help him through the filming process.

“The only thing that worked to calm me through the makeup was everything they had ever done. I’ve no idea why, but the Bee Gees just made me happy.”

“There’d be no Grinch without them!”


See Jim Carrey on The Graham Norton Show, tonight (Friday 12th December) at 10:35pm on BBC1