60 SECONDS: Jim Carrey

Actor Jim Carrey is one of the highest-paid people in Hollywood. Having arrived on the scene with a forgettable role in 1988's Earth Girls Are Easy, he's subsequently become a leading comedic and dramatic actor with acclaimed work including Eternal Sunshine Of The Spotless Mind under his belt alongside goofy turns in films such as Bruce Almighty. His latest effort, murder mystery The Number 23, is out on Friday.

Is this film going to make us all think differently about the number 23?

I hope so. And I love that about this movie. Hitchcock always tapped into something about our psyches, so that now we think of birds in a different way. The number 23 has a sort of intelligence all its own. And I love that game to play with an audience. I want people to go out of a movie thinking about something and not just leaving with a popcorn box. I want them to chew on it and have fun with it.

Death is a theme of The Number 23. What are your thoughts on it?

I believe your body dies but the rest of you is consciousness. That’s the only thing in the world that can’t be destroyed – awareness. I believe we’re all here to witness creation and everything else we do is for pleasure. If you have a thought in your head right now, you are not that thought – you are the space around that thought.

You’re into metaphysical stuff. Have you ever had an otherworldly experience?

When I was getting ready to play [oddball American actor and comedian] Andy Kaufman in Man On The Moon, I was renting this place in Malibu. I would sit out on the porch and try to think about what Andy would do in a certain situation. I looked up one day and suddenly there were about 50 dolphins floating in front of my house. I ripped my clothes off and got into the water with them. It was incredible.

Do you feel the need to prove yourself as a dramatic actor?

I don’t feel a need to prove myself. I’m just doing different things. It’s like you can’t wear the same sweater every day. That’s all it is for me. I can’t help it because if I get stuck in the same thing, I’d get sick of it.

What makes you laugh?

Mistakes. I can listen to jokes and just go: ‘Oh, that’s a good joke, nicely fashioned’ – but when somebody flubs a line, when somebody falls, when somebody makes a mistake, that makes me laugh. I love it in Scrabble when someone just can’t get a word out. That tickles me for some reason. Seeing people screw up, that’s what makes me laugh.

I love it in Scrabble when someone just can’t get a word out. That tickles me for some reason

Do you have to be miserable to be a comedian?

A lot of comedy is people trying to deal with their problems. And people do deal with those in different ways. Some people become a painter and put their angst on to a canvas. Some comedians are shy. It doesn’t appear as if I’m shy but if I start talking about my family, I just go to pieces and I’ll start crying.

What was your Canadian upbringing like?

It was very safe. We were protected by the Big Brother, you know – by the USA. There’s a lot of pride in Canada and a lot of just really good people. It’s like the British influence. We just don’t want to upset anybody or be embarrassed or something like that. So people are very polite. There are problems, of course, but there’s just something about the air up there. It’s beautiful.

Did you start out by entertaining your own family?

It started with: ‘How can I be special at this party of a bunch of people who came over to my house at Christmas?’ So it was kind of like the Jim Carrey Show every Christmas. I’d be thinking, ‘How can I show them I’m special?’ It came out of that need, I think. That morphed into different things. I believe that miracles happen and it’s just a matter of believing it. My whole life became that. I have visualised everything that has ever happened to me.

You famously visualised that you would earn $10million.

A lot of people have heard that story but it’s really the truth. I wrote out a cheque to myself for $10million and later I earned that. That’s an absolute belief of mine – that everything that happens in your life is a creation of your mind. It may not come in exactly the way you thought of it but it comes. A lot of people say: ‘Well, if I think I’m going to win the lottery, how come I don’t win the lottery?’ It may be because you don’t really think you’re going to win the lottery. I convinced myself of a lot of things growing up that happened because I convinced myself. I brainwashed myself, I brainwashed the universe. I just told it what it was going to be.

You’ve been famous for a long time. How do you view your own celebrity?

I have no barriers now. I immediately trust people and then if they break that trust, I go from there. I like meeting people. It’s great when people come up and say: ‘I love your stuff.’ I used to have barriers because I thought I had to. There’s that illusion that you have to be isolated, that you have to have the presidential suite because if you don’t, people will think you’re not a big star. You don’t have to do that. I enjoy it sometimes but I can go to some skanky cabin in the woods and have a better time.

What’s so great about the woods then?

There’s just something that turns me on. I love green. It’s the colour of life to me.