Jim Carrey is opening up about his return to the spotlight. In a new interview, he reflects on his career and why he ended up leaving Hollywood…and how he’s sort of dipping his toe back in. For one thing, Carrey says he didn’t really mean to become a household Hollywood name in the first place, he just wanted to shake things up creatively.

“My plan was not to join Hollywood, it was to destroy it,” he notes. He ended up leaving partly because he yearned for more creative freedom. He found that freedom in his new hobby – painting. “I really liked the control of painting – of not having a committee in the way telling me what the idea must be to appeal to a four-quadrant whatever,” he explains.

But now that he’s back, he’s found that he has more freedom to do things his way. For example, he’s enjoying his latest roles as executive producer of Showtime’s “I’m Dying Up Here” and the star of the upcoming show, “Kidding.” “I think that there’s definitely something in this piece that calls me as far as the idea of being hit by a freight train in life,” he adds. “Trying to hang on to the idea of yourself that you had before it happened that’s really attractive.”

Source: The Hollywood Reporter