CARREY TAKES A RISK IN `TRUMAN SHOW'.

Byline: Bob Strauss Daily News Film Writer

Spend just a little time with Jim Carrey, and you understand why he was perfect for ``The Truman Show.''

Yes, we've heard that the movie is not a slapstick comedy, but rather a thoughtful, delicate satire about television programming run amok. And that Carrey's Truman Burbank is a likable, unremarkable everyguy - except for the fact that, unbeknownst to him, his entire life has been televised and he's the biggest star in the world.

OK, the big star thing may not be much of a stretch. Since the manic comedian made the leap from TV's ``In Living Color'' to the big screen, Carrey's had one broadly played hit after another: two ``Ace Ventura'' gross-out comedies, ``The Mask,'' ``Dumb and Dumber,'' ``Batman Forever'' and ``Liar Liar.'' Even his single perceived flop of the last four years, the dark-tinged ``Cable Guy,'' grossed comfortably more than $100 million worldwide.

Still, though many nonfans admit that Carrey often brilliantly blasts his way through silly comic setups, even his strongest champions might reasonably doubt his ability to locate tender, troubled Truman.

Yet there's really something about the man - an optimism about life that borders on naivete, but is tempered by equally ever-present hints of psychic discomfort - that fits Truman to a T.

``Life opens up opportunities to you, and you either take them or you stay afraid of taking them,'' says Carrey, dressed in a sharp suit and avoiding anything resembling his hyperactive, wacko screen persona. ``I've never been one to sit back and go, `I'd better do what the audience wants me to do because I don't want to lose them.'

``A certain amount of people out there might not want to see me take a little different turn. But there are also a certain amount of people who have wanted to like me for so long because I keep peckin' away at 'em, and now I've given them an excuse to like me. I really believe that I may get a little more of that and a little less of the other. And, maybe, my core audience grows up with me.''

Life in a lens

Carrey could be describing the pilgrim's progress of Truman Burbank as easily as his own career trajectory. Adopted before birth by a media corporation, Truman has spent the three decades of his life in what he thinks is Seahaven, an impossibly picturesque and comfy island community. Impossible, because Seahaven isn't real; it's a great big set surrounded in a large pool of water underneath a gigantic dome, all of which are part of the most advanced TV production studio in the world.

Truman's every move has been recorded by hidden cameras and broadcast live worldwide. Everyone he's ever known is an actor playing a part - including his cheery wife Meryl (Laura Linney). His life is manipulated by legions of writers, production assistants and more sinister types, all at the beck and call of the show's serenely egomaniacal creator, the aggrandizingly named Christof (Ed Harris).

One day, though, Truman realizes that something's amiss in his perfect little world. From that point on, nothing can stop him from finding out what - as scary as that prospect may be.

``It's the idea that there comes a time when you have to separate yourself from what anybody at an authority level wants for you in order to follow what you want,'' Carrey observes. ``In order to do that, you have to go into the abyss, into the unknown, and hope to God that you reach the other side someday and that there are rewards for that.''

Carrey knows that there are penalties when you fail to make that stretch. The critics who weren't looking for an excuse to like him really took out the knives when ``Cable Guy'' revealed a chink in his box-office armor. But that, too, is now viewed through rosey lenses.

``There was a bit of the shooting gallery thing going through it,'' he says of the last attempt to change his image. ``But it's nothing anybody else hasn't faced, so I can't expect to get away with it. There are going to be things they aren't as crazy about as others, and there will be huge flops, I'm sure, someday soon.''

Not that he expects ``Truman Show'' to be that piece. Still, Carrey understood the commercial risk of appearing in a more dramatic, thought-provoking piece - at the start of the traditionally brain-dead summer movie season, no less - well enough to accept a 40 percent cut in his average asking price of $20 million for the project.

``It's not necessarily a genre I've been proven in on a mass commercial scale,'' he observes. ``I appreciate that, and I don't expect the studio (Paramount) to pay top dollar for that. Also, whenever you work with somebody the caliber of Peter Weir, that's just the way it is.''

The Peter Weir touch

Well-regarded Australian director Weir has a reputation for successfully helping stars branch beyond their apparent limitations. Action hero Harrison Ford, manic comedian Robin Williams and typecast character actress Rosie Perez all earned Oscar nominations for their more dramatic turns in Weir's ``Witness,'' ``Dead Poets Society'' and ``Fearless,'' respectively.

``Witness'' and ``Poets,'' however, have been Weir's only certifiable American hits. And although it's a far more accomplished film than ``Cable Guy,'' it's certainly possible that the critically acclaimed ``Truman'' may be too challenging for a wide audience.

Hit or miss, though, Carrey is philosophical about the future.

``The universe will give me whatever I need to stay in the place I wanna be,'' he declares. ``There's always a reason for things to happen. The problems that happen in your life are learning classes. The person at the end of all this, when you're 80 years old or whatever, that wins the game is the person that took all the knocks everyone else did and still stayed in love with the world.''

Sounds like the blather of a privileged Hollywood player. But Carrey has known harder times than many.

From janitor to comic

Though born into a fun-living, middle-class family in the suburbs of Toronto, ``my childhood was fantastic, but my adolescence is, basically, where it all went to hell,'' he says. Carrey's father lost his job, the family lost their home, and the kids had to pitch in on all-night janitorial jobs to keep food on the table of the camper they moved into.

Carrey still found time to perfect his gifts for impressions and outlandishly flexible physical humor, however. He was a staple of Toronto's prolific comedy club scene by his midteens and a stand-up star throughout Canada soon afterward.

He came to Hollywood in 1981 and worked steadily, if unimpressively, for a decade. Carrey headlined a failed sitcom called ``The Duck Factory,'' had big roles in bad films like ``Once Bitten'' and small roles in better ones such as ``Peggy Sue Got Married.''

Nothing he did stuck until 1990, however, when he joined the cast of the Fox network's hip-hop comedy revue ``In Living Color'' and quickly became a standout - not because he was the only white guy, but because he would go to lengths for a laugh that few humans had ever dared to.

The movie superstardom that followed hasn't exactly made Carrey's life complete, though. His first marriage collapsed and was replaced by a tortuous relationship with actress Lauren Holly. She and Carrey divorced after a 10-month marriage last year; she reportedly had a brief relationship with Edward Burns, the director/co-star of her last film, ``No Looking Back,'' but is once again seeing Carrey.

``I don't really want to speak about that,'' Carrey says by way of confirmation, ``because I've come to realize that when you talk when you're happy about certain things, you have to talk when you're sad.''

No such equivocation about his career prospects, regardless of how the challenging but rewarding ``Truman Show'' is received.

Trying Knotts

Carrey is currently working on a computer effects remake of the man-into-fish movie ``The Incredible Mr. Limpet.'' ``It's going to be the photo-real version, very exciting and loaded with new technology,'' says Carrey, who cites original Limpet Don Knotts as a major childhood hero. ``And I've wanted to do a family movie, something everyone can have a good time at.''

Following that will be another tricky stretch, though one also based on the work of a beloved comic icon. In ``Man on the Moon,'' Carrey is set to play the late Andy Kaufman, who developed the put-on to a point of high artistry.

``I never got to meet him, but I've seen practically everything he's ever done,'' Carrey says. ``Andy was a performance artist who realized, ahead of his time, that entertainment is not just laughter; it can also be: you can't help but be involved.''

And far down the line there's the ultimate brass ring. No less a director than Martin Scorsese has stated his desire to cast Carrey as his biggest role model of all, Jerry Lewis, in his planned all-star production about the life of Dean Martin.

Now that's an abyss he'd be a fool not to jump into. Carrey just hopes he won't be doing it alone.

``It's exciting to me that I can not only do the stuff that makes people flat-out not care about anything for two hours,'' he says, ``but I'm starting to get into an area where I can show them a bit of their own angst or whatever. With luck, they'll go, `If he feels what I feel, too, I guess that's OK then.' ''

CAPTION(S):

3 Photos

Photo: (1--Cover--Color) TUBE BOOB

JIM CARREY TALKS ABOUT GETTING WEIR-D IN `THE TRUMAN SHOW'

Photo Illustration - Bradford Mar/Daily News

(2) In ``The Truman Show,'' Jim Carrey plays a man whose entire life is being chronicled as part of an elaborate, scripted television production.

(3) Jim Carrey, left, took 40 percent less than his usual $20 million fee to work on ``The Truman Show'' with director Peter Weir.