(Credits: Far Out / YouTube Still)
Sun 12 October 2025 19:45, UK
When he was a young comedian making his way in ’80s Hollywood, one of Jim Carrey‘s childhood dreams came true. Unfortunately, it also quickly turned into a nightmare.
As a young boy growing up in Canada, Carrey loved two things: making people laugh and movies. He soon discovered that his rubber face, gangly limbs, and manic energy made that first love something he could pursue as a career in stand-up and sketch comedy. But while the spotlight was always a draw, it was the studio lights that would bathe him in glory.
For as long as he could remember, Carrey’s favourite star was cinema’s ultimate everyman, James Stewart. Emulating his hero would become a significant goal for the rubber-faced actor as he dreamed of a Hollywood legacy. So the chance to meet the golden age icon was too tantalising for Carrey to forget.
Hollywood, being a small town that can expand worldwide, it’s not uncommon for heroes to meet their own idols, and that happened for Carrey as he walked into a Tinseltown restaurant. “This was like a rock concert for me,” Carrey once explained. “I mean, it was Jimmy Stewart, and I would have camped out all night. And inside, I just sat there with my mouth gaping open in the front pew, like it was Pearl Jam or something.”
After Stewart’s reading finished, those in attendance were given the opportunity to come backstage to meet the man who had been such an indelible part of cinema in movies like It’s a Wonderful Life and The Philadelphia Story. Carrey excitedly joined the queue to interact with his hero, and the longer he waited, the more the young performer – who had always been a talented mimic – found himself assuming Stewart’s on-screen persona. He couldn’t help imagining that Stewart would be charmed by seeing just how thoroughly his work had influenced a young, aspiring actor, and admitted, “I thought it would be like Jesus meets John the Baptist. I’d meet him and he’d say, ‘You are the one who’s come to replace me.’”
Unfortunately for Carrey, he had built the situation up in his head so much that, by the time he reached Stewart, he was overwhelmingly ‘on’. Instead of wowing Stewart with his impersonation and having a great conversation with his hero about his importance in his life, he wound up with none of that. “I walked up to him and I was entirely too much,” Carrey confessed when speaking about the mortifying encounter to Charlie Rose in the ’90s. “His honest reaction was to become embarrassed by the attention and walk away. He didn’t say a word to me, and I was so crushed.”
Crushed though he was, Carrey picked up a vital life lesson along the way. “What I learned from it was, don’t honour false Gods,” he revealed with deep humility. “You know, nobody in this business is a god.” Carrey had attached outsized importance to meeting Stewart in his head and heart, but reality was never going to live up to his imagination. Stewart was just a man, and it confirmed to Carrey that no one person should ever be put on a pedestal.
Over the next 40 years, of course, Carrey became one of the most beloved stars in Hollywood, and must have had thousands of encounters like this, but with the roles reversed. After all, younger generations of actors have as much hero worship for him as he had for Stewart. Hopefully, though, he has a better idea of how to handle fans who lose their shit in front of him when they’re so intensely star-struck – because he was once one of them.
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