Jim Carrey
Jill Johnson/JPI
"Everyone gets to be the big joke for a year. That's this business," Carrey tells Time in its new issue. "Last year it was Tom Cruise. I could be the next Kathie Lee Gifford. But you have to say to yourself, 'Wait a minute, dude, that's not you.' "
In the magazine profile, the comedian professes to have found spiritual enlightenment, revealing plans to get his ideas down on paper for a book he says he might title Be Ready to Be O.K.
"It will be more representative of who I am than anything I've ever done," he says. "I feel like I know something. These thoughts make me feel like I'm wearing gold shoes."
Another prospective project is a children book. "It's called Cynthia's New Friend," he says. "It's about how we hate change. We hate people to change because we're afraid they'll fly away."
And while Carrey, 45, and girlfriend Jenny McCarthy, 34, have both said that they don't plan to get hitched, Joel Schumacher, the director of Carrey's new movie The Number 23, believes the star's happiness with the relationship is what allowed him to play such a miserable character in his new role.
"I've seen him really suffer in love. He wasn't ready to go to the places he goes in this movie back then. He was afraid that if he went to those dark places, his life would be misery the whole time he was making the movie," says Schumacher. "But now life is good for Jim."
And Carrey's newfound enlightenment has allowed him to stray from his comedy roots to star in a thriller. " I don't want to pick scripts just to keep me in the status-phere," says the star. "You have to take the plunge to expose your true self. If you're true to yourself, you're turn someone on."
