Jim Carrey: Laughing In The Face Of Adversity

It is difficult to imagine that Canadian icon, comedian and actor, Jim Carrey, was once homeless, considering he now has a net worth over $150 million. But he experienced many uncomfortable situations along with his family while growing up impoverished and homeless.

As is the case with many actors, success came only after much hardship through in Carrey's case one might go so far as to say that life was extremely tough.

According to an interview with Howard Stern in 2003, Carrey came from a family with three siblings. His mother was a homemaker, and his father was a musician. Due to his father's profession, he constantly was out of work, leading Carrey's family to struggle severely and forcing Jim to drop out of school to support them financially.

There was a point in which his family had to live in a van or in a tent and had to work together as janitors and security guards because they could not afford rent.

“For a while, we pitched a tent on my sister’s lawn in the country,” Carrey said. “And then for a while, we went to campsites around Ontario. We’d use the facilities there and we actually had a lot of fun. We had more fun there than we did when we were doing this job that we didn’t like.”

Jim Carrey attributes developing his sense of humour as a mechanism to deal with adversity while growing up poor, something that today has made him very rich.