Jim Carrey Went Through CIA Torture Training With The Founder Of SEAL Team Six To Endure Makeup For ‘The Grinch’

Christmas is often viewed as the “most wonderful time of the year,” though when Jim Carrey shot How The Grinch Stole Christmas in 2000, it was far from a wonderful time.

The better way to describe the making of the beloved movie would be torturous, at least from the perspective of leading man Jim Carrey. Though the film has since become a Christmas classic, and was highly acclaimed for its advanced set design and unprecedented costume and make up, it was almost a disaster from the start.

Carrey did an absolutely phenomenal job as the not-so-jolly green Christmas hater, but as he told The Graham Norton Show, the process to get into the costume and makeup for the Grinch was almost too much to bear:

“When I did ‘The Grinch,’ the makeup was like being buried alive everyday. The first day (of makeup) was eight and a half hours, and I went back to my trailer and put my leg through the wall, and I told (Director) Ron Howard I couldn’t do the movie.”

Imagine sitting still for eight straight hours and getting caked with prosthetics and makeup. I guess that would make it pretty easy to have the Grinch’s patented disdain for Christmas if you had to do that every time. The comedic actor made it one day as the Grinch and was ready to call it quits, if not for a bright idea from one of the movie’s producers.

Brian Grazer, the producer of the film, came up with a brilliant plan to keep Jim Carrey from leaving the set. What was it? Hire a man that was trained to teach CIA operatives how to endure torture to help Jim Carrey sit through the hours upon hours of makeup.

Carrey recently told Vulture that the guy they brought in was actually the founding member of SEAL Team Six (the famous special ops unit that killed Osama Bin Laden):

“Richard Marcinko was a gentleman that trained CIA officers and special-ops people how to endure torture. He gave me a litany of things that I could do when I began to spiral. Like punch myself in the leg as hard as I can. Have a friend that I trust and punch him in the arm. Eat everything in sight. Changing patterns in the room. If there’s a TV on when you start to spiral, turn it off and turn the radio on. Later on I found out that the gentleman that trained me to endure the Grinch also founded SEAL Team Six.”

That’s absolutely wild.

Carrey was trained like a prisoner of war in order to make it through the production of…a children’s movie. That was the only way to get through for the talented actor, who ending up enduring the makeup and costume process for months on end in order to shoot the film. The man beneath the Grinch costume found one of the coping mechanisms told to him by the CIA official quite helpful, and used it (along with music from a popular disco group) to endure the film’s production:

“I smoked cigarettes as much as possible. There are pictures of me as the Grinch sitting in a director’s chair with a long cigarette holder. I had to have the holder, because the yak hair would catch on fire if it got too close.

But what really helped me through the makeup process, which they eventually pulled down to about three hours, was the Bee Gees. I listened through the makeup process to the entire Bee Gees catalogue. Their music is so joyful. I’ve never met Barry Gibb, but I want to thank him.”

Shoutout to the Bee Gees for helping Carrey with “staying alive” during the production of How The Grinch Stole Christmas. Sorry, I had to do it…

You can view the interview where Jim Carrey got into the details of ‘The Grinch’ below: