How Jim Carrey Responded After Being Told He Only Had 10 Minutes To Live

As bizarre as it sounds, Jim Carrey was once told that he only has 10 minutes to live. 

The incident occurred on Jan. 13, 2018, when a number of people in Hawaii received an ominous alert on their cell phones which read, “Ballistic missile threat inbound to Hawaii. Seek immediate shelter. This is not a drill.”

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The actor, who was living on the island at the time, said that his first thought was to escape after reading the message but then he chose to make his peace and accept the 'fate.'

“A fake missile alert in Hawaii. I was there. I was writing,” Carrey told Jimmy Fallon during an interview in 2020. “My assistant Linda called me, she was crying, she said, ‘We have 10 minutes left.’ I said, ‘What do you mean?’ She said, ‘The missiles are coming.'”

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Officials later said the false alarm was “part of a drill,” and later backtracked even further and said it was “human error” which caused the message to be sent, as reported by the New York Times.

However, for people living in Hawaii, the threat seemed very real. 

"I tried to get off the island to my daughter. I couldn't get off the island," he said. "The question was posed -- should we all try to get together? I said, 'I don't want to die in my car.' And we had to say goodbye."

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Following the conversation, Carrey decided to spend his final moments in what he thought would be a peaceful setting.

"I sat on the lanai and looked out at the ocean," he recalled.

"At that point, I just started going, 'OK, well, what can I do with this last moment of time?' And I just decided to go through a list of gratitudes.

“I could not stop thinking of wonderful things that have happened to me and blessings I've had. It was lovely. And I got to a point of grace with about two minutes to spare when I found out it wasn't actually happening.

“And all I was planning to do was close my eyes and be thankful because it's been a good ride."

But when Fallon interjected to ask him how he felt upon learning the event had been fake, Carrey quipped: "Then I got p***ed off and heads rolled!"

The actor had moved to the island whilst working on his debut novel Memoirs and Misinformation, and revealed that the blurry photo used as the book’s cover was actually a real picture of his face taken moments after hearing the news of the bogus missile strike.

"The cover is actually my face after being told I have 10 minutes to live," he told Fallon. "It was completely real to us."