Taylor Momsen was never scared of the titular character in the 2000 movie version of How the Grinch Stole Christmas, because she always understood that he was funnyman Jim Carrey. It’s just that she didn’t know what the real Carrey looked like under all that makeup and those prosthetics.
“Jim Carrey is the Grinch.” Momsen said of her thinking on Thursday’s episode of the Call Her Daddy podcast with Alex Cooper. “So I didn’t know who Jim was until the premiere and someone had to point him out to me and go, ‘That’s Jim,’ and I went, ‘Oh, Jim.'”
Momsen played little Cindy Lou Who in the movie based on the beloved Dr. Seuss book that was first published in 1957. In the story, the tot convinces the evil character — with the personality of “a bad banana with a greasy black peel” — to see that the meaning of Christmas is much more about love than commercialism. (Despite the fact that even the Whos worked themselves up into a frenzy shopping around that time of year.)
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“I get asked a lot if he scared me, because I think a lot of kids were scared of the Grinch,” said Momsen, who was just 7 when the movie was released. “He was never scary to me. To me, he was always Jim, and he was always in makeup.”
Always. (The movie actually received the 2001 Oscar for Best Makeup.)
“The funny thing is, I never knew what Jim Carrey looked like,” the Gossip Girl actress said, “because I never saw him cause he was there way early doing the prosthetics.”
Still, Momsen had nothing but good things to say about Carrey/The Grinch.
“He was very protective of me,” she recalled. “He was very kind, super funny, super animated, absolutely awesome.”
The rest of the cast for the Ron Howard-directed film included Christine Baranski, Molly Shannon, Bill Irwin, and Jeffrey Tambor.
Steve Granitz/FilmMagic; Jamie McCarthy/WireImage
Former costars Jim Carrey and Taylor Momsen
In August 2000, three months before the movie’s release, Carrey himself — by then known for movies such as Ace Ventura: Pet Detective and its sequel; The Mask; Batman Forever; and The Truman Show — told Entertainment Weekly that playing the green creature wasn’t always delightful.
“About two weeks in, I was having a lot of trouble with the Grinch suit, so they brought a guy in who actually teaches people how to handle torture, and he gave me a couple of tips,” Carrey said. “You just forget [the pain]. Sitting around in that suit was not too fun, but performing in it was amazing. I can be as uncomfortable as I want, but when somebody says action, it’s like going into another reality.”
Listen to Momsen’s full conversation above.
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