Jim Carrey and Anthony Hopkins Used the Same Method Acting to Play Ace Ventura and Hannibal Lecter
Actor Jim Carrey shot to mega-stardom after starring in the 1994 feature Ace Ventura: Pet Detective. The comedian once claimed he used the same method to get into character for the film as Anthony Hopkins did for Hannibal Lecter. Although the two characters couldn’t be any more different.
Jim Carrey wanted his Ace Ventura character to be ‘unacceptable’ to audiences
Carrey was largely responsible for translating his Ace Ventura character to the big screen, perhaps even more so than the film’s script. Rick Moranis was originally supposed to play the wacky detective before it ended up in Carrey’s hands.
Carrey eventually decided to put his own creative spin on the character, which was so unexpected it even surprised his co-stars. Carrey’s Pet Detective co-star, Courtney Cox, recalled being caught off guard at the unexpected turn for the comedian’s character.
“I remember when we first rehearsed, he wasn’t playing that character,” Cox once said in an interview on The Howard Stern Show. “He wasn’t like, ‘All righty then.’ He just was playing it straighter and I thought, ‘Ooh, this is going to be a pet detective, hmm, and he’s really playing it kind of straight.’ And then he turned it on when we started filming, and I thought, ‘Oh my God, he’s the funniest person.'”
Despite the movie’s commercial success, many critics didn’t care too much for the feature. But it was a reaction that Carrey anticipated given his aim for the character.
“I knew that this movie was either a hate-it or love-it thing. The only thing that bothered me about the negative reviews was that we didn’t get credit for trying something that was all the way out. No holds barred,” Carrey once told Roger Ebert. “When you get a script like Pet Detective, if you try to play it real, it would have been boring as hell. Horrifying. So, I was looking to do something that was really unacceptable.”
Jim Carrey and Anthony Hopkins used the same method acting to play Ace Ventura and Hannibal Lecter
Carrey had a fitting inspiration for his role as Ace Ventura. The comedian used birds to inform the ironically titled Pet Detective.
But he claimed his preparation for the feature had something in common with Anthony Hopkins’ Hannibal Lecter. Hannibal was a methodical serial killer and cannibal Hopkins played in Silence of the Lambs. It’s regarded as one of Hopkins’ most iconic roles and won the actor an Oscar for 16 minutes of screen time.
Surprisingly enough, Carrey felt one of Hopkins’ most coveted roles was also inspired by an animal.
“I called Anthony Hopkins, because I love Anthony Hopkins. And so I asked him to dinner. We found out over dinner that our method was exactly the same for Ace Ventura and Hannibal Lecter. Exactly the same,” Carrey once said on Inside the Actor’s Studio.
Hopkins was also inspired by animals for his Hannibal Lecter performance. But whereas Carrey based Ace Ventura on birds, Hopkins used tarantulas and reptiles as a template.
Anthony Hopkins doesn’t like the idea of method acting
Although Carrey has been known to use method acting every now and then for his work, Hopkins has often been against the technique. The actor preferred to slip in and out of his roles than to completely inhabit his characters and take them home with him.
“It’s a pain in the ass. Who the hell wants to be with some miserable grump because he wants to get his performance right, so you have to call him this or call him that? It’s so boring. I’ve been with actors like that and they’re a pain in the ass, they really are. They’re unpleasant to work with and I don’t think they’re always that good either,” Hopkins said in a 2013 interview with HuffPost.
