Eventually, the family’s financial problems were resolved and they moved into a new home. With more domestic stability, Carrey returned to the stage with a more polished act. In a short period of time, he went from open-mic nights to regular paid shows, building his reputation in the process. A reviewer in the Toronto Star raved that Carrey was “a genuine star coming to life.” Carrey was soon noticed by comedian Rodney Dangerfield, who signed the young comic to open his tour performances. Dangerfield eventually brought Carrey to Las Vegas. However, Carrey soon decided to move to Hollywood, where he began performing at The Comedy Store and, in 1982, appeared on the televised stand-up show An Evening at the Improv. The following year, he debuted his act on The Tonight Show.

In 1983, Jim Carrey dated singer Linda Ronstadt for eight months. Carrey has been married twice. His first marriage was to former actress and Comedy Store waitress Melissa Womer, whom he married on March 28, 1987. Their daughter, Jane Erin Carrey, was born September 6, 1987. Jane was a 2012 contestant on American Idol. Carrey and Womer divorced in 1995.

From 1990 to 1994, Carrey was a regular cast member of the ensemble comedy television series In Living Color. While short-lived, the popularity of this series helped him to land his first few major film roles.

Carrey played the lead role in Ace Ventura: Pet Detective which was released in February 1994 and went on to gross $72 million in the United States and Canada. Following its success and before the release of his next film, The Mask, which was anticipated to be another hit, Morgan Creek Productions paid him $5 million to reprise his role as Ace Ventura and New Line Cinema offered him $7 million to make a sequel to The Mask and paid him $7 million to appear in Dumb and Dumber. The Mask, released in July 1994, grossed $351 million worldwide, and Dumb and Dumber, released in December 1994, was another commercial success, grossing over $270 million worldwide. Carrey received his first Golden Globe Award nomination for Best Actor for his work in The Mask and was voted second on Quigley’s Top Ten Money Making Stars Poll, behind Tom Hanks.

Carrey portrayed the Batman villain The Riddler in the Joel Schumacher-directed superhero film Batman Forever (1995). The film received mixed reviews, but was a box office success. He reprised his role as Ace Ventura in Ace Ventura: When Nature Calls which was also released in 1995. Like the original film, it was well received by the public, but poorly received by critics. It was a huge box-office success, earning $212 million worldwide in addition to breaking records, with a $40 million opening weekend.

Despite his increasing popularity as a stand-up comic, Carrey turned his attention to the film and television industries, auditioning to be a cast member for the 1980–81 season of NBC’s Saturday Night Live. Carrey was not selected for the position, although he later hosted the show in May 1996, January 2011, and October 2014. In 1984, Carrey was in the short-lived sitcom The Duck Factory, and in 1985, starred in the horror comedy film Once Bitten.

A year later, on September 23, 1996, Carrey married his Dumb and Dumber co-star Lauren Holly; the marriage lasted less than a year. In the late 1990s and early 2000s, Carrey had a much-publicized, short-lived romance with his Me, Myself and Irene co-star Renée Zellweger, to whom he was engaged from 1999 to 2000.

Carrey believes in and advocates for the so-called “law of attraction.” In an interview with Oprah Winfrey on February 17, 1997, he revealed that as a struggling actor he would use visualization techniques to get work. He also stated that he visualized a $10,000,000 check given to him for “acting services rendered,” placed the check in his pocket, and seven years later received a $10,000,000 check for his role in Dumb and Dumber.

That same year, Carrey appeared as a fictionalized version of himself on the final episode of Garry Shandling’s The Larry Sanders Show, in which he deliberately ripped into Shandling’s character. In 1999, Carrey had the lead role in Man on the Moon. He portrayed comedian Andy Kaufman to critical acclaim and received his second Golden Globe in a row. In addition, he received his first Screen Actors Guild Award nomination for Best Actor.

In 2000, Carrey reteamed with the Farrelly brothers, who had previously directed him in Dumb and Dumber, for the black comedy film Me, Myself & Irene, a film that received mixed reviews but enjoyed box office success. Carrey played the role of state trooper Charlie Baileygates, who has multiple personalities and romances a woman portrayed by Renée Zellweger. That same year, Carrey starred in the second highest-grossing Christmas film of all time, How the Grinch Stole Christmas, playing the title character, for which he received both praise and criticism from critics alongside a Golden Globe nomination.

In 2004, Carrey starred in Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. The film received overwhelming acclaim upon release. Critics highly praised Carrey’s portrayal of Joel Barish, in addition to the performance of his co-star Kate Winslet, who received an Oscar nomination. According to CNN’s reviewer Paul Clinton, Carrey’s performance was the actor’s “best, most mature and sharply focused performance ever.” Carrey received another Golden Globe nomination and his first BAFTA Award nomination for Best Actor.

Carrey’s next appearance was in the 2004 black comedy fantasy film Lemony Snicket’s A Series of Unfortunate Events, which was based on the popular children’s novels of the same name. The film was positively received; Desson Thomson from The Washington Post said of Carrey’s approach to the character of Count Olaf,

Carrey received U.S. citizenship in October 2004 and remains a dual citizen of the United States and his native Canada.

Carrey met model and actress Jenny McCarthy in 2005 and made their relationship public in June 2006. In April 2010, the two ended their relationship. Despite the split and media circulations, in October 2010 McCarthy said, “Jim and I are still good friends”.

In a 2007 Hamilton Spectator interview, Carrey said, “If my career in show business hadn’t panned out I would probably be working today in Hamilton, Ontario, at the Dofasco steel mill.” As a young man, he could see the steel mills across the Burlington Bay and often thought that was “where the great jobs were.”

Since 2009, Carrey’s work has included a leading role in Glenn Ficarra and John Requa’s I Love You Phillip Morris, premiering in January 2009 at the Sundance Film Festival before receiving a wide release in February 2010. Carrey portrayed Steven Jay Russell, a con artist, imposter, and multiple prison escapee who falls in love with his fellow inmate, Phillip Morris (played by Ewan McGregor). The film received largely positive reviews, with Damon Wise of The Times giving the film four stars out of five, stating, “I Love You Phillip Morris is an extraordinary film that serves as a reminder of just how good Carrey can be when he’s not tied into a generic Hollywood crowd-pleaser. His comic timing remains as exquisite as ever.”

In 2009, Carrey wrote an article questioning the merits of vaccination and vaccine research for The Huffington Post. With former partner Jenny McCarthy, Carrey led a “Green Our Vaccines” march in Washington, D.C., to advocate for the removal of toxic substances from children’s vaccines, out of a belief that children had received “too many vaccines, too soon, many of which are toxic.” The rally was criticized by David Gorski, an American surgical oncologist on Science-Based Medicine blog for being anti-vaccine, not “pro-safe vaccine” and by Steven Parker on WebMD website for being “irresponsible”.

Peter Farrelly said in April 2012 that Carrey and Jeff Daniels would return for a Dumb and Dumber sequel, Dumb and Dumber To, with the Farrelly brothers writing and directing and a planned September 2012 production start. In June, however, Carrey’s representative said Carrey had left the project because the comedian felt New Line and Warner Bros. were unenthusiastic toward it. However, on October 1, 2012, Yahoo!’s “The Yo Show” carried the news item that the script was complete and that the original actors, Carrey and Daniels, would be reprising their roles. The plot involved one of the characters having sired a child and needing to find them to obtain a kidney. Dumb and Dumber To was released in November 2014.

Carrey met Cathriona White in 2012, who was a makeup artist and native of County Tipperary, Ireland. They dated for some period of time between 2012 and 2015. On September 28, 2015, White was found dead from a prescription drug overdose; ruled a suicide by the LA County Medical Examiner. Carrey was a pallbearer at her funeral in Cappawhite, County Tipperary, Ireland.

He starred alongside former co-star Steve Carell in the Don Scardino-directed comedy film The Incredible Burt Wonderstone (2013). Carrey played Steve Gray, a dangerous street magician who overshadows the formerly successful magician Burt Wonderstone (played by Carell). The film was released in March 2013 to mixed reviews and underperformed significantly at the box office, grossing just over $27 million on a $30 million budget.

In March 2013, Carrey announced that he had written a children’s book titled How Roland Rolls, about a scared wave named Roland. He described it as “kind of a metaphysical children’s story, which deals with a lot of heavy stuff in a really childish way.” Carrey self-published the book, which was released in September 2013.

On March 25, 2013, Carrey released a parody music video with Eels through Funny or Die, with Carrey replacing Mark Oliver Everett on vocals. The song and video, titled “Cold Dead Hand” and set as a musical act during the variety program Hee Haw, lampoons American gun culture, and specifically former NRA spokesperson Charlton Heston.

After being the girlfriend of Carrey, Cathriona White married Mark Burton in 2013. They continued being married until she died. On September 19, 2016, Burton filed a wrongful death lawsuit against Carrey, claiming that he had used his “immense wealth and celebrity status” to illegally obtain and distribute prescription drugs involved in White’s death. Carrey released a statement the following day:

At age ten, Carrey wrote a letter to Carol Burnett of the Carol Burnett Show pointing out that he was already a master of impressions and should be considered for a role on the show; he was overjoyed when he received a form letter reply. A fan of Monty Python whose TV show aired in the 1970s, in 2014 Carrey appeared on Monty Python’s Best Bits (Mostly) and recalled the effect on him of Ernest Scribbler (played by Michael Palin) laughing himself to death in “The Funniest Joke in the World” sketch. Radio Times states, “You’ll see why immediately: Palin’s performance is uncannily Carreyesque.”

Carrey delivered the commencement address at Maharishi University of Management in Fairfield, Iowa, in May 2014 and received an honorary doctorate for his achievements as a comedian, artist, author, and philanthropist.

On August 29, 2014, Carrey was honoured by Canada Post with a limited-edition postage stamp with his portrait on it.

On July 1, 2015, after the signing of a new vaccination law, Carrey called California Governor Jerry Brown a “corporate fascist” who was “poisoning” children by enacting the vaccination requirements. The law disallowed religious and philosophical reasons for exemption from vaccination. Carrey was criticized for being “ignorant when it comes to vaccines” by Arthur Caplan, head of the Division of Medical Ethics, at New York University, and by Jeffrey Kluger, senior writer at Time, who described his anti-vaccination statements as “angry, dense and immune to reason”.

In October 2016, White’s mother, Brigid Sweetman, also filed a wrongful death lawsuit against Carrey. In this suit, Sweetman’s attorney states that Carrey underwent a test for sexually transmitted infections and “purposely hid the results from Ms. White, whom he was intimately involved with, and failed to inform her that he had tested positive for hepatitis A, HSV (Herpes) I and II, and chlamydia. To make matters worse, Carrey then proceeded to have unprotected sex with Ms. White with full knowledge that he was STD positive.” Sweetman herself later issued a statement: “These documents show that Jim Carrey has lied to the media, the public and the court. Carrey has now been shown for what he is — a dishonest Hollywood celebrity who thinks he can say anything and fool people just because he is famous.” The lawsuit was dismissed on January 25, 2018, and attorneys for both sides confirmed there would be no further legal proceedings.

In June 2017, Showtime began airing the dramedy I’m Dying Up Here, for which Carrey served as the executive producer. The show, which chronicles a group of stand-up comics in 1970s Los Angeles, incorporates aspects of Carrey’s own experience. In September of that year, that same network announced that he would be starring in a comedy series titled Kidding, which will reunite Carrey and director Michel Gondry. By the end of 2017, it was announced that Catherine Keener would star opposite Carrey in Kidding.

Carrey was also the subject of two documentaries in 2017. The first, a short subject entitled I Needed Color about his lifelong passion for art, was released online in the summer. Later that year another documentary, Jim & Andy: The Great Beyond — Featuring a Very Special, Contractually Obligated Mention of Tony Clifton, premiered at The Venice Film Festival and was later picked up by Netflix. The film chronicles the behind-the-scenes drama during the shooting of Man on the Moon, when he never broke character as Andy Kaufman. It incorporates footage that was shot for the film’s electronic press kit but ultimately pulled by Universal as they felt that it was too damaging.

In June 2018, Carrey was cast to play as Dr. Robotnik, the main antagonist of the Sonic the Hedgehog series, in a film based on the video game franchise. The film was released in February 2020 to very positive reviews. Carrey’s portrayal of Robotnik was praised by critics and audiences alike, with some considering it one of his best performances in years. Carrey stated during an interview he was interested to return as Robotnik in the future, contrary to his normal disinclination to return for sequels.

Carrey attended the Golden Globes 2019 Party with his new girlfriend Ginger Gonzaga in January 2019. However, the couple split after less than a year of dating.

Carrey has been showing his own political cartoon drawings since August 2017, including controversial renderings of then-White House Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders and President Donald Trump. Carrey had even sparked an international event on 31 March 2019 posting a drawing criticising fascism by depicting Benito Mussolini’s infamous death with Clara Petacci; this irked Mussolini’s granddaughter Alessandra who chided him on Twitter calling him “a bastard” and his artworks “dirty paper”. His drawing repertoire culminated in an exhibition titled “IndigNation” opened on October 23, 2018 at the Maccarone Gallery in Los Angeles and features 108 pen-and-ink drawings from Carrey’s Twitter feed from 2016 to 2018.

In 2020, Carrey published Memoirs and Misinformation: A Novel. The book was originally slated for release in May 2020 and was then given a later release date. That same year, it was announced that Carrey would portray Presidential nominee Joe Biden on the 46th season of Saturday Night Live, taking over the role from Jason Sudeikis, Woody Harrelson and John Mulaney.