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Carrey was born in Newmarket, the son of Maria (nee Oram), a homemaker, and Mark Carrey, a musician and accountant. He has three older siblings, John, Patricia, and Rita. The family was Catholic and of part French Canadian ancestry (as the original surname was Carre). After the family moved to Scarborough, Ontario when Carrey was 14, he attended Blessed Trinity Catholic School in North York for two years, before enrolling at Agincourt Collegiate Institute, Scarborough's oldest high school for another year, and then briefly attended Northview Heights Secondary School for the remainder of his high school career (3 years in grade 10).

Carrey lived in Burlington, Ontario, for eight years and attended Aldershot High School. In a Hamilton Spectator interview (February 2007), Carrey remarks that "if his career in show business hadn't panned out he would probably be working today in Hamilton, Ontario at the Dofasco steel mill." When looking across the Burlington Bay towards Hamilton he could see the mills and thought "those were where the great jobs were". He already had experience working in a science testing facility in Richmond Hill, Ontario, and was somewhat resigned to that career path.

In 1979, under the management of Leatrice Spevack, Carrey started doing stand-up comedy at Yuk Yuk's in Toronto, where he rose to become a headliner in February 1981, shortly after his 19th birthday. One reviewer in the Toronto Star raved that Carrey was "a genuine star coming to life." In the early 1980s, Carrey moved to Los Angeles and started working at The Comedy Store, where he was noticed by comedian Rodney Dangerfield. Dangerfield liked Carrey's performance so much that he signed Carrey to open Dangerfield's tour performances.

Carrey then turned his attention to the film and television industries, auditioning to be a cast member for 1980-1981 season of NBC's Saturday Night Live. Carrey was not selected for the position (although he did host the show in May 1996). Joel Schumacher had him audition for a role in D.C. Cab, though in the end, nothing ever came of it. His first lead role on television was Skip Tarkenton, a young animation producer on NBC's short-lived The Duck Factory, airing from April 12, 1984, to July 11, 1984, and offering a behind-the-scenes look at the crew that produced a children's cartoon.

Carrey continued working in smaller film and television roles, which led to a friendship with fellow comedian Damon Wayans, who co-starred with Carrey as a fellow extraterrestrial in 1989's Earth Girls Are Easy. When Wayans' brother Keenen began developing a sketch comedy show for Fox called In Living Color, Carrey was hired as a cast member, whose unusual characters included masochistic safety inspector Fire Marshall Bill (whose dangerous "safety tips" were the target of censors and watchdog groups who saw the character as a dangerous example for naive younger viewers) and masculine female bodybuilder Vera de Milo. His on-screen antics caught the eye of Hollywood.

Carrey made his film debut in a cheese role in Rubberface (1983), which was known as Introducing...Janet at the time of release. Later that year, he won the leading role in Damian Lee's Canadian skiing comedy Copper Mountain, which included his impersonation of Sammy Davis Jr. Since the film had a less than one hour runtime consisting largely of musical performances by Rita Coolidge and Rompin' Ronnie Hawkins, it was not considered a genuine feature film. A few years later, Carrey saw his first major starring role in the dark comedy Once Bitten, in the role of Mark Kendall, a teen virgin pursued by a 400-year old female vampire (played by Lauren Hutton). After supporting roles in films such as Peggy Sue Got Married (1986), Earth Girls Are Easy (1988), and The Dead Pool (1988), Carrey did not experience true stardom until starring in the 1994 comedy Ace Ventura: Pet Detective, which premiered only months before In Living Color ended its run. The film was panned by critics, and earned Carrey a 1995 Golden Raspberry Award nomination as Worst New Star.

However, the film was a huge commercial success, as were his two other starring roles from that year, in The Mask and Dumb and Dumber. In 1995, Carrey appeared as the Riddler in Batman Forever and reprised his role as Ace Ventura in Ace Ventura: When Nature Calls. Both films were successful at the box office and earned Carrey multi-million-dollar paychecks.

Carrey earned twenty million dollars for his next film, The Cable Guy (directed by Ben Stiller), a record sum for a comedy actor. The attention drawn to the paycheck, coupled with some negative reviews, and the film's dark sensibility, all contributed[citation needed] to the film's mediocre earnings. Carrey quickly rebounded with the successful (and lighter) Liar Liar, a return to his trademark comedy style.

Carrey took a chance to play a more serious role (and a slight pay cut) to star in The Truman Show (1998), a change of pace that led to forecasts of Academy Award nominations. Although the movie was nominated for three other awards, Carrey did not personally receive a nomination, leading him to joke that "it's an honor just to be nominated...oh no," during his appearance on the Oscar telecast.[citation needed] However, Carrey did win a Golden Globe for Best Actor in a Drama and an MTV Movie Award for Best Male Performance. That same year, Carrey appeared as a fictionalized version of himself on the final episode of Garry Shandling's The Larry Sanders Show, making an impression by ripping deliberately into Shandling's character.

In 1999, Carrey won the role of comedian Andy Kaufman in Man on the Moon. Other actors, including Edward Norton, were interested in the role, but Carrey's audition, including an act with the bongo drums Kaufman used in his performances, helped him to be cast.[citation needed] Despite critical acclaim, he was not nominated for an Academy Award, but again won a Best Actor Golden Globe award for the second consecutive year.

In 2000, Carrey reteamed with the Farrelly Brothers, who had directed him in Dumb and Dumber, in their comedy, Me, Myself & Irene, about a state trooper with multiple personalities who romances a woman played by Renee Zellweger. The film grossed $24 million dollars on its opening weekend and $90 million by the end of its domestic run.

In 2003, Carrey reteamed with Tom Shadyac for the financially successful comedy Bruce Almighty. Earning over $242 million in the U.S. and over $484 million worldwide, this film became the second highest grossing live-action comedy of all time.

His performance in Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind in 2004 earned high praise from critics, who again predicted that Carrey would receive an Oscar nomination; the film did win for Best Original Screenplay, and costar Kate Winslet received an Oscar nomination for her performance. (Carrey was also nominated for a sixth Golden Globe for his performance).

In 2004, he played the villainous character Count Olaf in Lemony Snicket's A Series of Unfortunate Events, which was based on the popular children's novels of the same name. In 2005, Carrey starred in a remake of Fun with Dick and Jane, playing Dick, a husband who loses his job after his company goes bankrupt.

In 2007, Carrey reunited with Joel Schumacher, director of Batman Forever, for The Number 23, a psychological thriller co-starring Virginia Madsen and Danny Huston. In the film, Carrey plays a man who becomes obsessed with the number 23, after finding a book about a man with the same obsession.

Carrey has stated that he finds the prospect of reprising a character to be considerably less enticing than taking on a new role. The only time he has reprised a role was with Ace Ventura. (Sequels to Bruce Almighty, Dumb and Dumber, and The Mask have all been released without Carrey's involvement.)

Despite having a twenty year career with no Academy Award nominations, Jack Nicholson (who in the first 20 years of his career had 5) has named Carrey the "Jack Nicholson" of the next generation.

Carrey has been married twice, first to former actor and Comedy Store waitress Melissa Womer, with whom he has a daughter, Jane Erin Carrey (b. September 6, 1987 in Los Angeles County). They were married on March 28, 1987, and were officially divorced in late 1995. After his separation from Womer in 1994, Carrey began dating his Dumb and Dumber co-star Lauren Holly. They were married on September 23, 1996; the marriage lasted less than a year. Carrey dated actress Renee Zellweger, whom he met on the set of Me, Myself & Irene, but their relationship ended in a broken engagement in December 2000. During 2004, Jim dated his massage therapist Tiffany O. Silver. In the May 2006 issue of Playboy Magazine (p. 48), it was mentioned that he has dated model Anine Bing. In December 2005, Carrey began dating actress/model Jenny McCarthy. The pair have since denied engagement rumors. They did not make their relationship public until June 2006. She announced on The Ellen DeGeneres Show on April 2, 2008 that the two are now living together, but have no plans to marry, as they do not need a "piece of paper".

Carrey has a chipped tooth; for his role in Dumb and Dumber, he simply removed the tooth cap.

Carrey is a vegetarian. He attended a Presbyterian Church with his family in the early 1990s. His favorite band is death metal band Cannibal Corpse, who made a cameo appearance in Ace Ventura.

Carrey received U.S. citizenship on October 7, 2004, and now maintains dual citizenship of the U.S. and his native Canada, where he has had a star on Canada's Walk of Fame in Toronto since 1998.

He went public about his bouts with depression in a November 2004 interview on 60 Minutes. Carrey has made calls to the public, by way of internet videos, to try to bring attention to the political suppression in Burma, especially of Nobel Prize winner Aung San Suu Kyi, whom he describes as a "hero of [his]".

• The Sex and Violence Family Hour 1980 Various Personalities
• The All-Night Show 1980 Various Voices
• Introducing...Janet (later renamed Rubberface) 1981 Tony Moroni
• Copper Mountain 1983 Bobby Todd
• All in Good Taste 1983 Ralph Parker
• 1984 1983 Finders Keepers
• The Duck Factory (TV-Series) 1983 Skip Tarkenton
• Once Bitten 1985 Mark Kendall
• Peggy Sue Got Married 1986 Walter Getz
• The Dead Pool 1988 Johnny Squares
• Pink Cadillac 1989 Comedian
• Mike Hammer: Murder Takes All (TV) 1989 Brad Peters
• Earth Girls Are Easy 1989 Wiploc
• In Living Color (TV-Series) - (1990-1994) 1990 Various Roles
• High Strung 1991 Death
• Doing Time on Maple Drive (TV) 1992 Tim Carter
• The Itsy Bitsy Spider 1992 The Exterminator (voice)
• Ace Ventura: Pet Detective 1994 Ace Ventura
• The Mask 1994 Stanley Ipkiss
• Dumb and Dumber 1994 Lloyd Christmas
• Batman Forever 1995 Riddler/Edward Nygma
• Ace Ventura: When Nature Calls 1995 Ace Ventura
• The Cable Guy 1996 The Cable Guy
• Liar Liar 1997 Fletcher Reede
• The Truman Show 1998 Truman Burbank
• Simon Birch 1998 Adult Joe Wenteworth
• Man on the Moon 1999 Andy Kaufman/Tony Clifton
• Me, Myself & Irene 2000 Officer Charlie Baileygates/Hank
• How the Grinch Stole Christmas 2000 The Grinch
• The Majestic 2001 Peter Appleton
• Bruce Almighty 2003 Bruce Nolan
• Pecan Pie (Short Subject) 2003 Man on Bed
• Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind 2004 Joel Barish
• Lemony Snicket's A Series of Unfortunate Events 2004 Count Olaf
• Fun with Dick and Jane 2005 Dick Harper
• The Number 23 2007 Walter Sparrow/Det. Fingerling
• Horton Hears a Who! 2008 Horton (voice)
• Yes Man 2008 Carl Allen
• I Love You Phillip Morris 2009 Steven Jay Russell
• A Christmas Carol 2009 Ebenezer Scrooge, Ghosts
• Ripley's Believe It or Not 2009 Robert Ripley