Overview
- Carrey says the first day required more than eight hours in the chair, after which he told Ron Howard and Brian Grazer he was quitting and ready to return his $20 million fee.
- Howard recalls Carrey suffering panic attacks on set, lying on the floor breathing into a paper bag due to the painful, claustrophobic transformation.
- Producer Brian Grazer enlisted Richard Marcinko, known for training special‑ops and CIA personnel, to teach coping techniques, which Carrey says helped him endure the process.
- The team cut the application time to roughly three hours and adjusted the schedule for medical reasons, as Howard says consecutive days in prosthetics were damaging Carrey’s skin.
- Makeup legend Rick Baker rejected a studio push to simply paint Carrey green, Carrey insisted on full‑eye contacts despite an offer to do it digitally, and both now point to digital methods as the only way he might revisit the role.