The reinvention of Jim Carrey: As actor baffles fans with his 'unrecognisable' appearance how star's career was derailed by questions over his ex's suicide, a string of failed relationships and anti-vaccine beliefs

He was once one of the biggest Hollywood actors on the planet, dominating the movie industry throughout the 1990s and early 2000s. 

However Jim Carrey left fans doing a double take when he hit the red carpet at the 51st César Awards on Friday night. 

After receiving an Honorary César for his decades-long career, his achievement was somewhat overshadowed by his noticeably different appearance, with some fans bluntly suggesting he'd gone under the knife with his face looking puffy and swollen. 

From Ace Ventura to The Mask, Man On The Moon to The Truman Show and Bruce Almighty, Jim has a plethora of hits to his name, but his personal life is a different story. 

The star has somewhat retreated from the spotlight in recent years after he became embroiled in scandal and controversy. 

The tragic suicide of his on-off girlfriend Cathriona White cast a dark shadow over the star after lurid details about their relationship emerged, including notes in which she accused the actor - who was 25 years her senior - of introducing her to debauched life of sex and drugs and 'giving her' herpes.

He also has his fair share of failed relationships and made headlines for his anti-vaccine beliefs. 

Meanwhile in 1997 he caused controversy when he grabbed an actress by the head during the MTV Movie Awards and forced his lips on hers.

Growing up Jim and his family struggled financially and him and his family became  homeless when he was just 15 years old.

Forced to drop out of school, Jim worked as a janitor to help support his parents, turning to comedy to escape from his woeful days.

After dabbling in TV and film in the late 70s, Jim bagged his first major role in the 1984 NBC sitcom Duck Factory, which was followed by a part in the comedy film Finders Keepers.

And after starring in Ace Ventura: Pet Detective in 1994, Jim was propelled to the dizzying heights of fame practically overnight.

He then went on to act in The Mask and Dumb and Dumber, which were also box office hits, cementing his status as a Hollywood's newest sensation.

Throughout the 1990s and early 2000s, Jim also landed roles in Batman Forever, The Cable Guy, Liar Liar, The Truman Show, Man on the Moon, Me, Myself & Irene, How the Grinch Stole Christmas, Bruce Almighty, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, Lemony Snicket's A Series of Unfortunate Events, Fun with Dick and Jane, The Number 23, Yes Man!, and A Christmas Carol.

During those years, he accumulated a whopping six Golden Globe nominations, two of which he won.

He notably became the first comic actor to receive an upfront $20 million salary for The Cable Guy, and according to Variety, that has remained the standard amount of money given to actors to get them into a movie.

But as his career flourished, the actor faced a slew of blows to his personal life behind the scenes.

He struggled to find love, going through multiple heartbreaking and extremely public splits throughout his career, before most famously becoming embroiled in a shocking wrongful death lawsuit.

Jim's on-off girlfriend Cathriona White died from a prescription drug overdose in 2015. 

Her death was ruled as a suicide, but her estranged husband Mark Burton later sued the actor, claiming he'd caused her mental distress that contributed to her suicide. 

Mark also alleged that Jim 'improperly obtained prescriptions for Ambien and the powerful opioid oxycodone under the alias Arthur King,' and gave them to Cathriona, according to the The Oxford Eagle. 

Jim had started dating the makeup artist in 2012, when she was 27 and he was 52.

Jim was a pallbearer at her funeral in Ireland and was pictured comforting her friends and family, but things soon turned sour as details of Cathriona and Jim's relationship began to emerge. 

A note Cathriona wrote two years before her death gave a damning description of how she felt the actor treated her.

The note written on her iPad was discovered by lawyers working on behalf of her mother Brigid Sweetman, and estranged husband, Mark Burton, who filed a wrongful death lawsuit against Jim, saying he gave her the pills to kill herself after obtaining them in a false name and giving her STDs.

'You did good things for me but being with you broke me down as a person, Jim. I was promised Jekyll and instead I got Hyde,' she wrote in the note.

'Because I love you I would have stuck out Hyde all year and done everything he wanted to be with Jekyll for 5 of those, but you threw me away when you absorbed anything worthwhile that was left of me.'

She also spoke of the shame she felt over having STDs, which she claimed she'd contracted from Jim.

'You have not thought about the stigma I have to live with for the rest of my life, you have not apologized or once asked is there something you can do to make it better or even felt bad for it,' she wrote.

'You gave me HSV and HPV, I want you to apologize for it because you care enough to. I want you to understand that however little a thing seems to you, it ruins a girl's life.

'I want you to take care when you are with other girls and pay attention to your body your actions effect people.'

The Irish make-up artist also said: 'Before you, I might not have had very much but I had respect, I was a happy person.

'I loved life, I was confident and I felt good in my skin and was proud of most decisions I made, I met you, you introduced me to cocaine, prostitutes, mental abuse and disease.

'You did good things for me but being with you broke me down as a person, Jim.'

Texts between the pair showed how Cathriona became concerned she had an STD in January 2013, and texted Jim, who replied: 'Aggravated folacles [sic] or bumps are normal when you shave or have vigorous sex.'

The following month she again wrote to the star about finding 'a couple of bumps' and wanting to get 'checked', telling him that she had tested before they got together so she couldn't have caught an STD from anyone else.

In response, Jim texted back and ended their relationship. He penned: 'Don't want to talk anymore... I'm done. You have become too much drama.' 

In response to her family's legal action, Jim then launched a counter lawsuit, dropping the bombshell that he had already paid Cathriona an undisclosed sum of money in 2013 to settle her STD claims, while demanding her mother and husband pay him back three times the original settlement.

He described Cathriona as a 'beautiful but immature and emotionally damaged woman' at the start of their relationship and alleged that her former attorney took advantage of her 'warm and exciting' romance with the star to profit.

The actor also said that Cathriona had blackmailed him by threatening to go public with what he said were false claims that he had given her sexually transmitted diseases unless he paid her millions of dollars.

Jim was later cleared after his attorney found that Cathriona had edited the information on a friend's STD test to make it look like it had belonged to her so that she could prove she was clean before entering into a relationship with Jim.

Despite their earlier legal battle, the pair did get back together in 2015.

The actor said he forgave her and that the pair continued building a future and started working on a co-habitation agreement so that she could permanently move in with him.

She was upset, he said, by his insistence that she sign a non-disclosure confidentiality agreement but that she otherwise seemed 'happy' until her 30th birthday on September 14.

He claimed that her biological mother Brigid, who she'd been estranged from, sent her an upsetting message on Facebook, saying she was 'worthless' and would 'never amount to anything'.

It was this and her apparent guilt over 'extorting' him two years earlier which prompted her suicide, according to Jim.

Cathriona, who according to loved ones had depressive tendencies, wrote several suicide notes before she took her own life. One, written in 2012, describes Carrey as a 'strong and wonderful human being'.

'I love Jim and I'm sorry I brought turmoil into his life,' she wrote.

In May 2013, another note, written to her attorney, told a different story. It demanded that the world know he was responsible for her death.

'I want you to get together and release to the press about all the physical abuse, mental abuse and diseases that Jim gave me.

'Unfortunately, I don't have the the words to put to paper I am too numb,' she wrote.

Her final suicide note, which were discovered near her body in 2015, was addressed to the actor.

It showed no signs that she was angry with him but hinted that their relationship had come into trouble.

'Jim, I thought we had chosen each other. I believed it meant something and I let myself relax in your arms in the safety of being sure of one thing.. us.

'If everything went sideways we had each other. I've spent 3 days now in disbelief that you're not here.

'I thought when I saw you it would be OK again and it's not,' it said.

She signed it off: 'I love you, please forgive me I'm just not for this world. Peace and love to all your hearts.'

Before her body was found, Jim had sent a text message asking where his missing prescription painkillers were.

The LA Coroner's report - obtained by Daily Mail Online - showed that Cathriona had taken the actor's anti-inflammatory pills along with a cocktail of other drugs to end her life.

Despite the lawsuit being dropped, the scandal tainted the star's image and he retreated from public life until 2020 when he began to feature in films again.  

Prior to Cathriona, Jim had a colourful love life with a string of failed high profile relationships and splits, with the star attributing his public lifestyle as the reason for their failures. 

He married former actress Melissa Womer in 1987, and together, they welcomed a daughter, named Jane, later that year.

But their marriage came to an end in 1995, after eight years together. 

Life could be tough with an ‘extremely depressive person’, Melissa said, recalling how he would sit on the floor and howl, and she would ‘sit up counselling him through it until four or five in the morning on many, many nights’. 

But then Jim became famous with the 1994 comedy film Ace Ventura: Pet Detective and his spirits soared.

After that box-office hit, he admitted he had had trouble coming home to domesticity and Melissa recalled: ‘He decided he wanted to enjoy success from the perspective of a single man.’

He then went on to wed his Dumb and Dumber co-star Lauren Holly in 1996, but that romance didn't even last a full year and was over by 1997. 

At the time, Jim acknowledged he had hated being the mega-star bachelor who ‘could get laid every hour on the hour… I quickly found out that I’m not the dog that I thought it was maybe possible for me to be’.

He claimed he wanted to settle down ‘at a certain point’ with a woman he could grow old with.

Even so, he insisted, monogamy was not man’s natural state. It was certainly not his.

His marriage to Lauren lasted just eight months before they divorced, citing the usual ‘irreconcilable differences’.

In 1999 he became engaged to his Me, Myself and Irene co-star Renee Zellweger but he allegedly dragged his feet on officially tying the knot and the Bridget Jones star gave him an ultimatum to marry her within six months.

When the actor dithered, they had a furious row at his Los Angeles home and a devastated Renee ended up going to Hawaii –— a Christmas holiday they had planned as a pre-honeymoon — on her own. 

In 2002 he was in a relationship with actress January Jones.

From 2005 to 2010 he was then in a relationship with model Jenny McCarthy – before meeting Cathriona two years later.

Jim and Jenny started a five-year relationship in 2005 and were brought closer together through autism, a condition that afflicted Evan, her young son from a previous marriage.

After the couple split up, Jenny launched a bitter attack on Jim, accusing him of walking out on a boy who had regarded him as a father figure. 

After Cathriona, his next relationship was in 2019 when he attended the Golden Globes party with Ginger Gonzaga, the pair split after less than a year of dating. 

He is currently in a relationship with Min Ah, after the pair made their debut together at the César Awards on Friday. 

Jim made tribute to her in his acceptance speech as he added: 'Thank you to my wonderful family, my daughter Jane, and my grandson Jackson. 

'I love you now and forever. Thank you to my sublime companion, Min Ah. I love you, Min Ah. 

'And finally, thank you to the funniest man I have ever known: my father, Percy Joseph Carrey who taught me the value of love, generosity, and laughter.'

Jim has also been open about his battle with depression, revealing he has suffered from a young age and took Prozac, an anti-depressant, in the 90s.

He has previously admitted it is only ‘valuable for short periods of time’ and prevents people from ‘addressing the real problem’.

‘I was on it for a long time,’ he said in 2004.

‘It may have helped me out of a jam for a little bit. I don’t take anything now, I rarely drink coffee. No alcohol and no drugs, life is too beautiful.’

In 2017 he confirmed: 'At this point, I don’t have depression. There is not an experience of depression.

'I had that for years, but now, when the rain comes, it rains, but it doesn’t stay. It doesn’t stay long enough to immerse me and drown me anymore.'

Telling the i that he was no longer worried about the public legacy he will leave behind he said: 'I’m free of the business. I’m not the business.

'I don’t care what people think of me after I die. All I want is for people to think of me as a good energy here, a nice fragrance that has been left behind.'

He said: 'I’m perfectly fine with everything that has happened, even the horrible s**t you know, in life and in art. There is a lot of satisfaction about looking back at those things.'

However, he went on to say that there are still clouds hanging over him, explaining: 'What’s happening is really good, but there is some really bad in there too.

'Some people have come at me in the last couple of years with the intent of breaking off a piece of the Holy Grail for themselves, but the Grail isn’t a thing that you can break off. So they’re going to learn that the hard way. It’s not pleasant.'

Jim also began to face a slew of controversies throughout the 2010s, which eventually caused him to largely retreat from the spotlight.

He faced severe backlash online over some of his actions and comments - most notable was his controversial stance on vaccines.

Back in 2015, he went on a fierce tirade against immunizations online. He said he believed that the chemicals in the shots were causing a host of problems in children, and pointed to the growing number of autism cases in the country.

But his views were widely slammed due to the lack of medical proof.

In 2022, he came under fire again after he condemned Will Smith over his infamous Oscars slap.

Will stormed on stage and hit host Chris Rock in the face after he made a joke about the actor's then-wife, Jada Pinkett Smith.

'I was sickened by the standing ovation,' Jim said of the moment afterwards on Gayle King. 'I felt like Hollywood is just spineless en masse.

'You do not have the right to walk up on stage and smack somebody in the face because they said words.'

Amid his comments, people on social media began bringing up things that Jim had done in the past that they found problematic, and branded him a 'hypocrite.'

One person spoke about the time that he kissed then-20-year-old Alicia on stage at the MTV Movie Awards.

Footage of the incident, which occurred in 1997, showed a then-35-year-old Jim grabbing the actress by the head and planting his lips on hers, while she tried to push him off her.

'It's amazing that Jim Carrey sexually assaulted Alicia Silverstone by physically forcing her to kiss him on national TV, when she was [20], and it had literally no impact on his career whatsoever,' the social media user wrote. 'He's such a complete piece of s*** on so many levels.'

'Regardless of age or age gaps, what Jim Carrey did was ASSAULT. He's scum and he had no business forcing himself on people,' someone else agreed.

Neither Jim nor Alicia have ever publicly spoken about the kiss, but it was reported that he 'apologized' to her backstage afterwards.

After his career began to slow down, in April 2022 Jim revealed that he was thinking of quitting acting for good, while promoting Sonic the Hedgehog 2.

However he later returned for Sonic the Hedgehog 3, claiming he 'needed the money'. 

'You know, I bought a lot of stuff and I need the money, frankly,' he said.

When asked about his past comments about retiring, he added, 'That might've been hyperbole, yeah.

'I came back to this universe because I get to play a genius, which is a bit of a stretch.'