Jim Carrey Wrote Himself a $10 Million Check When He Was Broke

In the late 1980s, Jim Carrey was nobody. He was sleeping in a Volkswagen camper van parked on his sister's lawn in Los Angeles, doing open mic nights at comedy clubs for audiences that sometimes numbered in the single digits.

The Check

One night, Carrey drove his beat-up Toyota to the top of Mulholland Drive, looked out over the city that hadn't noticed him yet, and pulled out his checkbook.

He wrote himself a check for $10 million. In the memo line: "for acting services rendered." He post-dated it to Thanksgiving 1995 — roughly ten years away — and slipped it into his wallet.

The Wait

For years, the check sat there, getting more worn and faded with every audition, every rejection, every night sleeping in his van. Carrey later described the check as a "tool" — not magic thinking, but a daily reminder of where he was going.

His father Percy had been a talented musician who'd given up his dream to take a safe accounting job, and was eventually laid off anyway. "You can fail at what you don't want," Carrey once said, "so you might as well take a chance doing what you love."

The Payoff

In 1994, everything hit at once. Ace Ventura: Pet Detective made $107 million. The Mask followed. Then Dumb and Dumber, for which Carrey was paid exactly $10 million — just before Thanksgiving 1995.

The Coffin

When Percy Carrey died, Jim placed the worn, barely legible check in his father's coffin. The man who'd believed in his son when nobody else did got to take the proof with him.