Martin Freeman has branded Jim Carrey “self-aggrandising, selfish and narcissistic”.
The ‘Hobbit’ actor insisted the 59-year-old star should have been fired from 1999 Andy Kaufman biopic ‘Man on the Moon’ after he refused to break character throughout the four months of filming and insisted on being called ‘Andy’ even when the cameras weren’t rolling, as shown in 2017 documentary ‘Jim & Andy: The Great Beyond’, which examined the comic’s performance in the film.
He fumed: “For me, and I'm genuinely sure Jim Carrey is a lovely and smart person, but it was the most self-aggrandising, selfish, f****** narcissistic b******* I have ever seen.
“The idea anything in our culture would celebrate that or support it is deranged, literally deranged…
“He should have got fired. Can you imagine if he had been anybody else he would have been sectioned let alone fired, he would have been got rid of. It's the ridiculous leeway given to some people.”
Martin felt Jim had been “highly amateurish” in going so far and slammed the method approach as “pretentious nonsense”.
He added on the ‘Off Menu’ podcast: “You need to keep grounded in reality and that's not to say you don't lose yourself in between action and cut but the rest of it is absolutely pretentious nonsense.
“It's highly amateurish; it's essentially an amateurish notion because for me it's not a professional attitude. Get the job done man, f***ing do your work.”
The 49-year-old actor suggested the ‘Truman Show’ actor was “deluded” and admitted he hoped his elaborate performance and comments in the documentary were all a joke.
He said: “I think that's what that Jim Carrey thing looks like to me, at the very, very end, he says something that sort of is pertaining to his Christ-like self grandeur and makes me think at the very last second, is all this a wind up?
“Because, clearly, he's a very funny person and he knows absolutely where 'funny' is all the time, but I think has he lost himself in this delusion of thinking he's a guru or a fakeer because a few people do once you get to the top of the mountain, what you are you going to do then?
“What else gives your life meaning because essentially you could argue what we do, yes it doesn't cure diseases, but it has mobility to it and it's reasonably important, but if it's not you've got to go with it.
“Jim, you should have paid more attention at school if you wanted to do something more important. I hope he was joking.”
In the Netflix documentary, Jim insisted his performance in ‘Man on the Moon’ was out of his control.
He said in the opening credits: “Andy Kaufman showed up, tapped me on the shoulder and said ‘Sit down, I'll be doing my movie, what happened afterwards was out of my control.’ “
And he claimed no one working on the film knew “what was real and not real half the time”.
He added: “I didn't know what was real or not real. We just went with Andy and Tony and wherever their whim took you and the emotions were often very real.”
