7 Facts You Didn't Know About 'Dumb and Dumber'

After repeat rejections because of the name “Dumb and Dumber,” the Farrelly brothers tried different names for the script just to get it read, including “Go West” and “A Power Tool Is Not a Toy.”

It’s hard to imagine the film with anyone besides Jim Carrey and Jeff Daniels, but the list of actors considered for the role was pretty ambitious. It included Nicolas Cage, Martin Short, Steve Martin, Rob Lowe and Gary Oldman. In an interview with Hollywood Reporter, Bobby Farrelly explained, “Occasionally we’ll bump into somebody who will say like, ‘Hey, how come you never offered me a role?’ ‘I offered you Dumb and Dumber.’ But they never got them. You know, you thought you were being turned down by all the actors, but it’s really the agents just saying, ‘No, he can’t do it, he’s unavailable.’ It’s rare that they actually give it to them. So hard to tell how many actually passed, but we were told 100.”

Jim Carrey was initially offered $350,000 to play the role of Lloyd, but he renegotiated with the studio, especially after the success of his “Ace Ventura: Pet Detective” that year. He was paid $7 million to appear in the film, whose entire budget was $16 million. The year 1994 was a breakout for Carrey, who headlined three number one films: that first “Ace Venture,” “The Mask,” and “Dumb and Dumber.”

Before his viral “Newsroom” monologue, his role as Atticus Finch in a Broadway production of “To Kill a Mockingbird,” or his signing on to play James Comey, Jeff Daniels was… well, he still wasn’t a comedic actor. The Farrelly brothers wanted Daniels for the role of Harry because they liked his by-turns-dramatic-and-comedic performance in 1986 film “Something Wild.” But the studio was concerned that Daniels, who hadn’t starred in any fully comedic roles, would not be able to keep up alongside Carrey. They lowballed him an offer of $50,000 to try to get him out of their hair. Daniels took the part, and the rest was history.

During filming, the directors would have the actors do two takes that adhered to their scripts, and let them improvise in following takes. Some of the ad-libbed parts were the funniest moments in the joke-dense flick, including the “Wanna hear the most annoying sound in the world” scene, the moment when Lloyd is surprised about the Apollo 11 moon landing at the bar in Aspen, and the doggy bag part at the end of the kung-fu sequence.

Jim Carrey has a chipped tooth IRL. The actor uncapped it to play Lloyd in “Dumb and Dumber” and its sequel. Carrey chipped the tooth in an elementary school fight.

The film’s Danbury Hotel was the Stanley Hotel in Estes Park, Colorado. This is the hotel that inspired Stephen King to write his horror classic “The Shining.” Carrey requested to stay in room 217, the apparently haunted room, and had to check out after three hours because the creepy vibes were too much for the funny man.