It’s Been 30 Years Since Tommy Lee Jones Told Jim Carrey That He Hates Him
In just two weeks’ time, it will be the 30th anniversary of the release of Batman Forever, the sequel that gave us Val Kilmer’s portrayal of the Dark Knight, the controversial rubber Bat-Nipples and an excuse for everyone in America to buy a CD containing Seal’s “Kiss From a Rose.”
That also means that it’s the 30th anniversary of Jim Carrey and Tommy Lee Jones’ behind-the-scenes drama. Carrey, of course, played Edward Nygma, aka The Riddler, alongside Jones’ Two-Face. In retrospect, it’s amazing that neither of them were hospitalized after ingesting so much scenery.
Back in 1995, Carrey was diplomatic about his working relationship with Jones, telling one interviewer about the “wonderment” he felt about the Oscar winner. “I thought, If he’s a pain in the butt I’ll use it, and if he’s, you know, (a) happy guy, I’ll have a good time,” Carrey said. “And so it was a little of both. It made for great chemistry, I think.”
When asked if they were “buddies” in real life, Carrey responded, “No, not really. He’s a different kind of guy, you know? He’s a strange bird. On-screen it’s like fire, but off-screen, I’m a pretty mellow dude.”
But Carrey was far more candid in later years. He once revealed to Howard Stern that Jones was immediately hostile to him, likely because “Dumb and Dumber came out on the same weekend as Cobb.” Actually, Jones’ baseball biopic came out two weeks before the Farrelly brothers' comedy, but Dumb and Dumber’s blockbuster success certainly made it very apparent that there would never be a Cobb 2.
Carrey ran into Jones at a restaurant the night before filming their first scene together. “I went up to say hi and the blood drained from his face,” Carrey recalled. “In such a way that I realized that I had become the face of his pain or something. And he got up kind of shaking and hugged me and said, ‘I hate you. I really don’t like you.’”
At that point, Jones added the hilariously antiquated put-down, “I cannot sanction your buffoonery.”
While that already sounds pretty unpleasant, in 2017 Carrey acted out the anecdote during an episode of Norm Macdonald Live, making the encounter seem even more intense.
The film’s director, the late Joel Schumacher, later backed up Carrey’s claims concerning Jones’ unpleasantness, stating that the curmudgeonly actor “was not kind” to the Ace Ventura: Pet Detective star during the production. “Tommy is, and I say this with great respect, a scene stealer,” Schumacher explained. “Well, you can’t steal the scene from Jim Carrey. It’s impossible. And, I think it irked Tommy.”
Carrey did get Jones back at one point during filming. In a 1995 Rolling Stone profile of Carrey, Jones told the magazine that Carrey hit him in the junk with the Riddler cane. Or as Jones put it, he “cracked me right in the family jewels.”
At the time, it sounded like an accident — but now we’re not so sure.
