We all know Jim Carey as a laugh-out-loud zany comic who’s brought us some of the highest-grossing comedies of all time such as The Mask, Dumb and Dumber, and Ace Ventura. But, we don’t all know the story of Carey’s struggle. He grew up in a lower-income family with a father who struggled to keep jobs. They were so poor that he had to drop out of high school at the age of 15 and get a job as a janitor just to help support the family.

On his first comic stand-up at a club called Yuk Yuk’s in Toronto, he was booed off stage. Later, when he auditioned for Saturday Night Live for the 1980-81 season, he failed to land the part.

However, we all know about Carey’s later success. In an interview with Oprah Winfrey, Carey talks about how he used the Law of Attraction by writing himself a check for $10,000,000 million dollars for “Acting Services Rendered,” later placing the check in his wallet for 7 years until he received a $10,000,000 million dollar payment for his work in Dumb and Dumber.