World's Only Living Toon

He is the movies' new $7 million man, the year's surprise star, but Jim Carrey still approaches an interview as if he were auditioning for the roles of all three Stooges and a couple of minor Marx Brothers (Zippo and Gonzo?). On a high balcony of Los Angeles' Ma Maison hotel, the star exhausts successive teams of reporters and photographers with his giddy verve. He not only entertains them, he outmans them, peopling the place with dozens of nutsy, improvised characters.

"O.K.," the current photographer suggests, "now just be yourself. Show me who you are."

Carrey pauses, scans the floor, shrugs and says, "Who knows?"

It's a good bet that this Carrey -- the ventriloquist who wonders poignantly if he has lost his own voice -- is a bit of a gag too. The Canadian comic, 32, has been having too good a time lately to search for the Inner Jim. And so has anyone who has seen Carrey inhabit dozens of roles on Fox's prime-time skitcom In Living Color or commandeer the big screen in last winter's smash Ace Ventura Pet Detective. That rowdy farce, cagily directed by Tom Shadyac, earned $72 million at the domestic box office. Coupled with big expectations for Carrey's new fantasy-comedy The Mask, it kicked the actor's price from $750,000 to $7.5 million for headlining Dumb and Dumber, due early next year. He will also pocket $5 million as the Riddler in Batman Forever.

In The Mask he plays Stanley Ipkiss, who puts an ancient mask on his face and is transformed from bank-clerk dweeb to zoot-suited superdude, genially terrorizing Edge City and winning the plushly encased heart of a gun moll (Cameron Diaz). The computer wizards at Industrial Light & Magic help alchemize this ragged film into a megamorphic extravaganza. But Carrey doesn't need any cybernetics or silicon to rubberize his limbs. He is his own best special effect, the first star who is a live-action toon.

What Robin Williams does with his mind -- rev it up, kick it around, bend it and blend it, find witty twists at lightning speed -- Carrey does with his body. He walks in sections, as if he had been pulled apart and then basted back together. He can freeze into an exclamation point or, doing his trademark hula, go all loose and noodle-y. Imagine a goyish Jerry Lewis with less ego and more self-esteem and you have Carrey. Crossbreed Lewis' The Nutty Professor with Batman and you have The Mask, with Carrey breathing life into director Charles Russell's tatty fable.

Carrey doesn't distinguish between action and dialogue; he is hyper doing both. He can turn the simple act of listening into power aerobics. His laser stare becomes maniacally penetrating; turning to hear a question, he nearly gives himself whiplash. Then he speaks, with an overbearing precision that suggests Maxwell Smart ranting through a bullhorn. And now he's off again, pogo-sticking or jackknifing about, slipping into his impersonations of Clint or Geraldo or a female bodybuilder or a charred fire marshal. He's a cool doofus -- a grownup version of the class clown.