VENICE, Italy — Jim Carrey, the comic actor who was one of 1990s Hollywood’s biggest stars, doesn’t exist.

So says the Jim Carrey who came to the Venice Film Festival this week with “Jim and Andy,” a documentary about his experience playing comedian Andy Kaufman in the 1999 biopic “Man on the Moon.”

He says the mega-successful entertainer Jim Carrey is “a character that has been playing me my whole life” and that he is now trying to transcend.

Carrey stayed in character as Kaufman for months while making “Man on the Moon,” and had a crew film behind the scenes on what must be one of the strangest movie shoots ever.

The documentary mixes the backstage footage with an interview in which Carrey reflects on his life and the nature of identity.

The Associated Press