All All. Sign In. Bruce Almighty premiere. List activity. Jim Carrey. Jim Carrey, Canadian-born and a U. James Eugene Carrey was born on January 17, in Newmarket, Ontario, Canada, and is the youngest of four children of Kathleen Oram , a homemaker, and Percy Carrey, an accountant and jazz musician.
Carrey was an incurable extrovert from day one. In junior high, he was granted a few precious minutes at the end of each school day to do stand-up routines for his classmates provided, of course, that he kept a lid on it the rest of the day. Carrey's early adolescence took a turn for the tragic, however, when the family was forced to relocate from their cozy town of Newmarket to Scarborough a Toronto suburb.
They all took security and janitorial jobs in the Titan Wheels factory, Jim working 8-hour shifts after school let out not surprisingly, his grades and morale both suffered. When they finally deserted the factory, the family lived out of a Volkswagen camper van until they could return to Toronto.
Carrey made his stand-up debut in Toronto after his parents and siblings got back on their feet. He made his reportedly awful professional stand-up debut at Yuk-Yuk's, one of the many local clubs that would serve as his training ground in the years to come. He dropped out of high school, worked on his celebrity impersonations among them Michael Landon and James Stewart , and in worked up the nerve to move to Los Angeles.
He finessed his way into a regular gig at The Comedy Store, where he impressed Rodney Dangerfield so much that the veteran comic signed him as an opening act for an entire season. During this period Carrey met and married waitress Melissa Womer, with whom he had a daughter Jane. The couple would later go through a very messy divorce, freeing Carrey up for a brief second marriage to actress Lauren Holly. Wary of falling into the lounge act lifestyle, Carrey began to look around for other performance outlets.
