Jim Carrey is an actor, comedian, impressionist, screenwriter and producer who portrayed Edward Nygma/The Riddler in Joel Schumacher's Batman Forever.
Bat-history
The search for Robin Williams replacement
Terry Semel & Bob Daly had originally wanted Robin Williams to play the Riddler. Schumacher agreed under the condition that he could cast whoever he pleased in the role of Two-Face as the supporting villain, which was a largely unknown character at the time and unimportant to the studio. This was a similar "sweetheart deal" that Tim Burton had been given with the Catwoman character after being mandated with using the Penguin as the primary villain. Schumacher tried to reach Williams by phone for over a year and would not reurn his calls. Williams asked Terry Semel & Bob Daly for a percentage of the film's grroses and they instructed Schumacher to consider casting a younger actor. Michael Keaton leaving the project for similar reasons was also a factor Williams' loss of interest in the movie. In a 2005 dvd interview, Schumacher said “I had known Jim since he was a stand-up comedian. We had met each very early in both our careers. He was just starting to emerge as this huge box-office draw. While we had discussed many possible individuals for Riddler, I knew he could pull it off.”
On-set tensions
“While I had a couple big successes at that point, this would be my first huge budget deal. I worried about a lot of individuals with a lot of egos and would they be open to my ideas? But the moment Joel and I starting working together, he just let me go with whatever came into my head.”[1] Chris O'Donnell had no problem with Carrey and understood the value he brought to the movie as its main draw at the time it was made. Stating what it was like to work with Carrey, “He was just so good with improvisation and I know he’s like that on 90% of the movies he does. But for him, it’s like a kid in a candy store, he sees what he wants and goes to town.” There was a large amount of resentment toward Carrey from Val Kilmer and Tommy Lee Jones, who both signed on with the understanding they were the stars and box office draw for the movie. But Carrey had been on a notorious box office winning streak at the time and there was a lot of pressure from the studio to convert the project into a Jim Carrey vehicle. The whole reason Peter MacGregor-Scott was chosen the producer was because he previously oversaw the production of Under Siege, initially aiming for that kind of tone to re-invent Batman Film Franchise. But Semel & Daly prefered chasing the youth culture's fascination with Jim Carrey movies at the time.
Publicity tour
Kilmer appeared on the May 1995 cover of Premiere magazine with Carrey. This was a marketing effort to dispel the widely reported bad blood between the pair at the time in a co-interview.
Characters portrayed by Jim Carrey in the Batman Universe
Career beyond Batman
His various movie roles have included Stanley Ipkiss/The Mask in The Mask, Ace Ventura in Ace Ventura Pet Detective and the sequel When Nature Calls, Lloyd Christmas in Dumb and Dumber and it's sequel, Cable Guy in The Cable Guy, Fletcher Reede in Liar Liar, Truman Burbank in The Truman Show and The Grinch in How the Grinch stole Christmas.
Jim is known especially for his highly energetic slapstick performances and his stand up comedy routines.
References
- ↑ b-roll EPK interview shown on television