Carrey

Okay, this looks very much like Jim Carrey doing Mick Jagger. Anyway, Joel Stein reports over at Time that Carrey may be reinventing himself yet again (excerpt):

That's the thing you have to admire about Carrey even as you cringe at what he's saying: he's not afraid. He's not afraid of getting made fun of, he's not afraid of change, and he's not afraid of his audience flying away. In fact, every time he's become successful at something, he's stopped doing it. As soon as he became famous as an impressionist, he stopped doing characters. After he got traction as a stand-up, he retired his act, going onstage without any material, often being overtly hostile to his audience. When that got him a job on Fox's sketch show In Living Color and led quickly to a $20 million paycheck, he decided to ditch his devoted Adam Sandler-loving audience by making the disturbing, dark comedy The Cable Guy and dropped his price to make such dramas as The Truman Show and Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. And now he's made The Number 23, a cheapie $30 million horror film about a man consumed with numerology, in which he frequently appears shirtless, tattooed and with slicked-back hair. If he somehow manages to keep any of his original fans, he could still try to shake them with an Elizabethan costume drama.

There have been reports of bizarre behavior from the sets of Carrey's recent movies and that, plus the fact that he has fired his reps and had projects cancelled recently (like "Used Guys" and "Ripley's Believe It or Not") hasn't done his profile any good.

I can respect an artist changing their approach but Carrey has always been manic and playing a man who is losing his grip on reality in an edgy psych-thriller, "The Number 23", may not be the best move right now. While Carrey's core audience might be getting older, they may prefer to remember him as a comedy superstar.

If Carrey has made adjustments in his approach in the past, this looks more like a pivotal turning point. Buzz on 23 is not very strong and if the box office is weak it will be interesting to see what tack Carrey takes next. An Elizabethan costume drama might not be such a bad idea.