Jim Carrey sat down with Access Hollywood ahead of next week’s premiere of Sonic the Hedgehog 2 and made a shocking admission about his career that was decidedly not an April Fool’s joke.
A few minutes into the interview, Carrey was asked by host Kit Hoover if he had heard that Dolly Parton specifically named him to play her former music partner, Porter Wagoner, in her upcoming biopic. “You know who would make a great Porter, though, in all seriousness?” Parton said at the time. “Jim Carrey.”
“I have not heard that,” Carrey confessed, adding that it’s a “terrible shame” that the two had been born in different eras. “Because I’d have chased her,” he quipped.
“It’s a lovely thing,” Carrey continued. “But I’m retiring. Yeah, probably.” When asked by Hoover if he was playing a joke on her, the 60-year-old funnyman clarified:
“I’m being fairly serious,” he said. “It depends, you know, if the angels bring some sort of script that’s written in gold ink that says to me it’s going to be really important for people to see, I might continue down the road. But I’m taking a break.”
So … no Sonic 3, then?
“I really like my quiet life, I really love putting paint on canvas, and I really love my spiritual life,” Carrey continued. “And I feel like — and this is something you might never hear another celebrity say, for as long as time exists — I have enough. I’ve done enough, I am enough.”
And a quick look at Carrey’s filmography would indeed seem to indicate that the actor is gradually stepping back from the spotlight. Aside from the Sonic the Hedgehog movies and his two-season Showtime comedy-drama series Kidding, Carrey has worked sporadically over the past decade — compared, at least, to the mid-’90s through the aughts when he was putting out at least one big-budget film nearly every year.
So hey, good for him! It remains to be seen whether Carrey can truly break free from the iron grip of Hollywood and Dolly Parton, but in either case, we wish him the best.