‘I thought we’d just gone camping!’ Jim Carrey’s homeless years as a teen laid bare

“I guess we’re all abandoned to a certain extent, all of us in some way or another by something or someone, and that forms in us our belief about ourselves.”

The family’s financial issues would come to a head when Carrey was a teenager, leaving them homeless and living in a tent around Canada.

Proving the effect his childhood had on his comedy, Carrey would later joke in one of his stand-up gigs: “My father lost his job and I actually became homeless for quite some time. Of course I grew up in Canada so I thought we had just gone camping.”

During his younger years, Carrey’s mother would often speak about her own mortality quite casually, alarming her young son.

He recalled to The Hollywood Reporter: “I remember locking myself in the bathroom and crying because I thought they were going to die.”