Jim Carrey is opening up about his past loves. During an interview on SiriusXM’s The Howard Stern Show, the host asked Carrey about a passage in his semi-autobiographical novel, Memoirs and Misinformation, where the 58-year-old comedian refers to Renée Zellweger as the “love of his life.”
Carrey and Zellweger, 51, dated after co-starring in the 2000 flick, Me, Myself and Irene. They split later that year.
“She was special to me, very special,” Carrey said of Zellweger. “I think she’s lovely.”
Prior to his short-lived romance with Zellweger, Carrey dated singer Linda Ronstadt, who he “immediately adored” after meeting her at one of his stand-up performance.
“She came up and she said, ‘Wow, you’re really good. Would you like to come on the road with me?’ And I said, ‘No, but I’ll go out with you,'” Carrey recalled. “… I was giving up a gig, which I needed. I had no money. She kind of screwed up her face and she said, ‘OK.'”
Carrey was 21 at the time, while Ronstadt is more than 15 years his senior.
“It may have seemed like some boy-toy kind of situation to somebody looking at it from the outside, but she treated me with incredible respect,” he said. “She loved my talent and respected my talent. We used to hang out together and she’d say, ‘You’re going to be where I am. You’re going to deal with all this stuff I’ve dealt with.'”
Carrey called his relationship with Ronstadt “a beautiful eight months.”
“We both knew it wasn’t going to be forever, but I have such respect for her,” he said. “She’s just an incredible human being.”
Despite reliving some of his past loves in his novel, Carrey — who was married to Melissa Womer from 1987 to 1995 and to Lauren Holly from 1996 to 1997 — insisted that he doesn’t “pine for anybody.”
“It’s not that kind of situation. It’s just my way of saying there was a very important thing there and to recognize that,” he said. “… I don’t regret. I don’t have those things. But I do appreciate the people that have come through my life for the good that they gave me.”
