One night, alone, he drove to the top of a hill overlooking the city that kept saying no. He took out his checkbook and wrote himself a check for ten million dollars — dated for Thanksgiving several years in the future, with a note in the memo line: "for acting services rendered." Then he folded it into his wallet, and he told no one.

He carried that worn check through rejection after rejection. And then, right around the date he'd written on it, his life changed in a way that made the number look almost modest.

But this isn't really a story about money, or fame, or positive thinking. It's a story about a father and a son, about belief handed down like an inheritance, and about where that impossible check finally came to rest when the one person who believed in him first was no longer there to see the promise kept.

The name is revealed only at the final page. See if you can guess before the end.

New stories every week. And now... you know the rest.

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About this episode: The Final Page tells the true story of Jim Carrey — the early years of poverty in Canada, the family that lived in a van, the ten-million-dollar check he wrote himself on Mulholland Drive, and the check he kept until his father's death. A true-story history podcast about untold stories, famous people's hidden origins, and the twist you don't see coming — in the storytelling tradition of Paul Harvey's "The Rest of the Story."

Watch the illustrated version on YouTube: The Final Page Show (@thefinalpageshow)