Are you there, God? It’s him, Bruce. 2003’s Bruce Almighty featured an all-star cast — including Jim Carrey, Morgan Freeman, Steve Carell and Jennifer Aniston — and memorable scenes that still leave viewers roaring with laughter today.
After news anchor Bruce Nolan (Carrey) gets passed over for a promotion at work — a role that notably goes to Evan Baxter (Carell) — he’s convinced God (Freeman) has it out for him. In response, God gives Bruce all of his powers, leading to the kind of laugh-out-loud hijinks only a cast of this caliber could pull off.
When speaking about working with Aniston — who portrayed Bruce’s girlfriend, Grace Connelly — Carrey gushed over his love for the Friends alum.
“She’s tremendous. We work well off each other because Jennifer is a completely different person than me,” the Liar, Liar actor told BlackFilm.com in 2003. “I’m a person who just throws myself out there and does wild stuff and she’s like the center of the wheel. She’s the type of person that can sit there and allow things to come to her. I seek them out and destroy them. It’s a wonderful kind of mix.”
One of the comedy’s most-talked-about scenes is the bit where Bruce — with the powers of God — attempts to sabotage Evan’s career by having him speak nothing but gibberish while on camera. The film’s blooper reel shows Catherine Bell (who portrayed Evan’s co-anchor) barely able to get through a take without cracking up. The scene shot Carell to superstardom.
The Office alum later revealed that there was a scene so intense it didn’t even make the final cut.
“The part they cut out is when Jim Carrey makes my nose start to bleed profusely, which they thought [was] too mean of him to do as a character … and then my head burst into flames,” Carell revealed on The Graham Norton Show in 2020, revealing they ran a “real live” gas line down his back and a coil on his head for the effect. Flames came shooting out.
“That was the most terrifying thing ever because you could hear them venting the gas line before it happened. I could see the crew in front of me, they all lit up because the flame was so bright,” the Beautiful Boy actor recalled, adding that since the film was his big break, he wasn’t going to stop them.
“(It was) my first movie,” he shared. “What was I gonna say, ‘I’m not gonna do it’? ‘Of course! Sure! Light me on fire! Sounds terrific!’”
Keep scrolling to see the cast of Bruce Almighty then and now:
