Jim Carrey wasn’t sleeping, in a metaphorical sense. He was just resting his eyes.
“I think I’ve decided not to retire, but to have power rests,” Carrey told Us Weekly exclusively. “I meditate a lot.”
Two years after claiming that he was “fairly serious” about retiring from acting after starring in Sonic 2, Carrey, 62, is back for Sonic the Hedgehog 3, which will hit theaters on December 20.
In Sonic 3, the Dumb and Dumber star plays Dr. Robotnik, the Sonic the Hedgehog franchise’s main antagonist. This time around, Sonic will forge an unlikely partnership with Dr. Robotnik as they work together to defeat the mysterious Shadow the Hedgehog.
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Carrey has portrayed the mad scientist, also dubbed “Egghead,” in all three live-action Sonic films.
Carrey was true to his word about taking a power nap from acting after Sonic 2, not having appeared in a movie since then. He said at the time that he would only come out of retirement “if the angels bring some sort of script that’s written in gold ink.”
“That might’ve been hyperbole, yeah,” Carrey told the Associated Press earlier this month. “I came back to this universe because I get to play a genius, which is a bit of a stretch. And you know, I bought a lot of stuff and I need the money, frankly.”
When Carrey first announced his retirement in 2022, he explained to Access Hollywood that he was at peace with calling it a career.
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“I really like my quiet life and I really like putting paint on canvas and I really love my spiritual life and I feel like — and this is something you might never hear another celebrity say as long as time exists — I have enough,” he said. “I’ve done enough. I am enough.”
But now that Carrey is back on screen, this might not be the end of his acting career. Though another “power rest” could be in the works, he recently told ComicBook.com that he’d be open to also reprising his role as The Grinch. Carrey starred as The Grinch in the 2000 live-action film version of the Dr. Seuss book.
There’s just one hang-up.
“The thing about it is, on the day, I do that with a ton of makeup and can hardly breathe,” he said. “It was an extremely excruciating process.”
He added, “The children were in my mind all the time. ‘It’s for the kids. It’s for the kids. It’s for the kids.’ And now, with motion capture and things like that, I could be free to do other things. Anything is possible in this world.”
With reporting by Tufayel Ahmed.
