“I was in hell in that Grinch costume, too,” the actor told Playboy in 2004. “It was like knives were stuck in my eyes.”
Alas, he was able to push through. “It was just the worst situation comfort-wise you could possibly imagine,” the Bruce Almighty alum added. “But still, when they said ‘Action!’ I was free, you know? There’s something about that suspended life moment. When they say ‘Action!’ I’m free.”
In fact, it took about eight and a half hours to do all the Grinch makeup on the first day. However, he claimed someone was brought in to help with any discomfort.
“I went back to my trailer and put my leg through the wall and told [director] Ron Howard that I couldn’t do the movie,” Carrey said on The Graham Norton Show in 2014. “And then [producer] Brian Grazer came in, and being the fix-it man, and came up with a brilliant idea, which was to hire a gentleman who is trained to teach CIA operatives how to endure torture. So that’s how I got through the Grinch.”
For more fascinating facts about Carrey, keep reading…