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Okay, we know that the Grinch is a mean one (there is a whole song about it), but that doesn’t mean he deserved to be tortured. In a newly released oral history on How the Grinch Stole Christmas, star Jim Carrey reveals the lengths he had to go to survive being in those prosthetics – including having a torture consultant on set to keep him from walking off the film entirely.

“The suit was made of unnervingly itchy yak hair that drove me insane all day long,” Carrey explained in a newly released oral history of the film to coincide with the 25th anniversary of How the Grinch Stole Christmas. “I had 10-inch-long fingers, so I couldn’t scratch myself or touch my face or do anything. I had teeth that I had to find a way to speak around, and I had full contact lenses that covered the entire eyeball, and I could only see a tiny tunnel in front of me.”

The experience was so bad that Jim Carrey was prepared at one point to quit the movie entirely, including paying back his $20 million paycheck with interest. To help him deal with the intense physical and psychological strain of being that uncomfortable for that long, producer Brian Grazer enlisted a consultant who had experience instructing military officers on how to endure torture.

“Richard Marcinko was a gentleman that trained CIA officers and special-ops people how to endure torture,” Jim Carrey explained. “He gave me a litany of things that I could do when I began to spiral. Like punch myself in the leg as hard as I can. Have a friend that I trust and punch him in the arm. Eat everything in sight. Changing patterns in the room. If there’s a TV on when you start to spiral, turn it off and turn the radio on. Smoke cigarettes as much as possible. There are pictures of me as the Grinch sitting in a director’s chair with a long cigarette holder. I had to have the holder, because the yak hair would catch on fire if it got too close.”

However, Jim Carrey doesn’t seem to regret making How the Grinch Stole Christmas. “Though it was a struggle, it’s such an honor to have been that character. It’s just the most beautiful story in the world, how badly we need people to open their hearts. It’s always going to get you. Many of us are walking around with a desiccated heart right now.”

25 years after it was first released, How The Grinch Stole Christmas remains one of the best of the Dr. Seuss film adaptations. Just don’t expect Jim Carrey to endure the torture of the Grinch costume anytime soon.

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