Jim Carrey spent two hours in the morning getting the grinch make-up put on, and another one at night to take it off. Jim Carrey revealed on The Graham Norton Show that he felt so confined and uncomfortable in the latex skin, he almost quit the production. Help came in the shape of counseling by a professional that had previously trained CIA agents, who taught him the same torture-resistance techniques.

And even so, he still managed to improvise when things went... too well. In the scene where the Grinch pulls the sheet off of the table, all of the silverware was supposed to fall off. But he pulled the sheet so well that nothing fell. So he had to improvise and go back just to ruin the table.