Jim Carrey Once Recalled How Much Tommy Lee Jones Despised Him While Filming ‘Batman Forever’ – ‘I Hate You. I Really Don’t Like You’
Tommy Lee Jones was buddy-buddy with Jim Carrey in Batman Forever, but his off-screen relationship with his co-star was apparently nothing like that.
Many industry insiders initially brushed off feud rumors as pure hearsay. But eventually, Carrey confessed to the rift, even claiming that Jones once allegedly told him to his face how much he despised him.
Jim Carrey and Tommy Lee Jones were lead characters in ‘Batman Forever’
The sequel to 1992’s Batman Returns, Batman Forever focuses on the superhero (Val Kilmer) and his battle against villains Two-Faced and The Riddler, played by Jones and Carrey, respectively.
Batman Forever released in 1995 to mixed reviews from many fans and critics. But it was a box-office success, pulling in over $330 million globally against a $100 million budget, according to Box Office Mojo.
Jim Carrey and Tommy Lee Jones’s actual relationship was not as it seemed
Nearly 20 years after its release, Carrey admitted that he and Jones clashed on the set of Batman Forever. Appearing on The Howard Stern Show in 2014, Carrey said he was initially looking forward to working with Jones, but Jones was “crusty” when they met.
He didn’t know the exact reason behind Jones’s alleged attitude, but he guessed it had to do with his successes, including Dumb and Dumber, which performed better than Jones’s Cobb in 1994.
“I think he was just a little freaked out because ‘Dumb and Dumber’ came out on the same weekend as ‘Cobb,’ and ‘Cobb’ was his big swing for the fences and that didn’t work out and that freaked him out a bit,” he shared.
The tension allegedly bubbled over one night when the two ran into each other at dinner, according to Carrey. “I walked into a restaurant the night before our big scene in The Riddler’s lair … I went up to say hi and the blood drained from his face, in such a way that I realized that I had become the face of his pain or something,” he recalled.
“He got up, kind of shaking, and hugged me and said, ‘I hate you. I really don’t like you,'” Carrey continued. “I was like, ‘Wow, OK. Well, what’s going on, man?’ And he said, ‘I cannot sanction your buffoonery.’ He did not want to work with me at that point.”
“That was a hard one,” Carrey added. “To go to work the next day was pretty tough.”
Still, Jim Carrey doesn’t harbor any ill will towards Jones
Despite their past, Carrey doesn’t seem to be harping on it. He even praised Jones’s talent to Norm Macdonald in 2017, adding, “I still love him.”
For his part, Jones seemingly has never commented on his alleged rift with Carrey. He also hasn’t shared the screen with him since then and, if we had to guess, he probably never will.
