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TwitThisNever Cry Again
Before Jim Carrey became the star he is today, he, too, was a little boy who confronted hardship. His mother spent much of Carrey's childhood in bed, suffering from a series of illnesses, some real, some psychosomatic. Young Jim spent countless hours trying to lighten her day, putting together many of the same kind of funny routines that eventually would make him world-famous. Despite his mother's warning that his face would freeze, Carrey would stand before a mirror mastering his impersonations of John Wayne, Don Adams and the Riddler from "Batman." Later on, when his father lost his job and the family wound up living in a camper van, Carrey sometimes slept in his tap shoes, in case his parents needed cheering up in the night.Rita Rudner, who has become a mainstay on the comedy-club circuit, also had a less than ideal childhood. She was 13 when her mom died of cancer, and Rita's father had little time for his daughter between work and caring for his wife. "If you are the most popular person in school, you don't grow up to be a comedian,'' Rudner once said. "I was insecure and had to lose myself in something fun." In doing so, she found her comic voice. When I was a kid, I had two friends, and they were imaginary and they would only play with each other.
G. Neil Martin, a professor of psychology at Middlesex University in the U.K. who has studied the psychology of comedy, says, "The ability to provoke makes the person who provokes the laughter belong. Laughter makes the person seem wanted; it provides the acceptance he or she never had."
And for some comedians, the laughter offers comfort not just to them, but to their family. After Ellen DeGeneres's parents divorced, she helped combat her mother's depression by making her laugh. "I found I could make her happy, and she wouldn't be crying anymore," says DeGeneres, presently the host of a popular daytime talk show. "When you're a kid you don't usually have that kind of control over your parent, but I could change her emotion, and that was amazing."
A few years later, when one of DeGeneres's best friends died suddenly in a traffic accident, hardship acted as a catalyst again. Sitting in her flea-infested New Orleans apartment, she found herself wondering why her friend was gone and yet the fleas were still around. The tragedy inspired her to write a routine in which we hear her side of a phone call to God. She says to the Almighty, No, I didn't realize how many people were employed by the flea-collar industry. I guess you're right. Of course you are, you being who you are. It was her first big bit, and it helped make her a star.
Today, DeGeneres says, "Life can be a bummer -- full of hurt and pain and sadness. It's part of it, and important to put it in perspective. Have a sense of humor as much as you can."
When Bernie Mac was very young, he came upon his mother, sitting in the living room, quietly crying. "I climbed on her lap," he says, "and started wiping her tears, asking, 'Mom, why are you crying?' And she kept saying 'Nothing, nothing.' My mother had breast cancer -- she died when I was 15 -- but she never said a word about it to anyone. Soon I began to cry, too, and there we were, both of us, crying.
"She had the TV tuned to 'The Ed Sullivan Show.' Bill Cosby came out and began doing his routine about snakes in the bathroom. Soon my mother was laughing -- crying and laughing at the same time. Then I started laughing. When Cosby got done, I asked my mama who he was. She told me, 'He's a comedian.' I told her, 'That's what I'm going to be when I grow up. I'm going to be a comedian, and maybe you never cry again.' "
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