Jim Carrey is a Hollywood icon who has inspired generations of performers, including Mountainhead star Cory Michael Smith. In Jesse Armstrong’s dark satire exploring wealth, ego, and identity, Smith delivers one of the film’s standout performances as Venis, a tech genius and the world’s richest man.
And he recently reflected on how Carrey influenced his approach to portraying the volatile mogul, while expressing admiration for his use of physicality, boldness, and exaggerated emotion, tools that helped him craft a fully realized, high-energy character.
Cory Michael Smith channeled Jim Carrey’s energy in Mountainhead
Cory Michael Smith, renowned for his role as the Riddler in Gotham, delivers a standout performance in Jesse Armstrong’s satirical film Mountainhead.
Portraying Venis Parish, the world’s richest man and owner of the destabilizing social media platform Traam, Smith embodies a character that is both absurd and chilling.
In a recent Esquire interview, he revealed that his portrayal was heavily influenced by Jim Carrey, whom he admired and imitated growing up. “I spent a lot of time as a child imitating him, so there’s a flavor of him in me,” he said.
Smith continued,
The thing that I really appreciate about him is he’s a clown. He’s a modern-day clown in cinema, and there aren’t a ton of people like that working today. I really appreciated the extravagance of his performances, and they were always complete characters.
Smith also shared how watching Carrey lose himself in his roles deeply shaped his own approach to performance and self-expression. “Today I feel like some of that still lives in me,” he said. “I like a character who can really fill a space energetically and unapologetically.”
And the influence is evident in Smith’s energetic and unapologetic embodiment of Venis, a character that fills the screen with a blend of manic charisma and unsettling detachment.
Smith has been lauded for capturing the moral ambiguity of tech elites, drawing subtle parallels to real-life figures without direct imitation.
Cory Michael Smith’s Venis in Mountainhead is a tech mogul parody with a chilling twist
In Mountainhead, Cory Michael Smith plays Venis Parish, a tech billionaire who has drawn inevitable comparisons to Elon Musk. Rather than a straightforward parody, Smith’s performance turns the archetype of the modern tech mogul into a theatrical spectacle.
While the character shares familiar beats, creator Jesse Armstrong has not confirmed whether Venis is directly based on the SpaceX founder. Smith, for his part, doesn’t mimic Musk. Instead, he leans into the absurdity of influence without accountability.
His character is disturbingly charismatic, detached from reality, and prone to bursts of performative vulnerability. But this isn’t just a one-note spoof. The real twist lies in how far Armstrong is willing to follow this ideology to its logical (and murderous) conclusion.
But this isn’t just a one-note spoof. The ‘twist’ lies in how far Armstrong is willing to follow this ideology to its logical endpoint. When the group contemplates killing their friend Jeff to protect their vision of a techno-fueled future.
With Mountainhead, Armstrong isn’t just mocking Musk-like figures; he’s exposing the slipperiness of moral logic in tech culture. The satire deepens as ideology mutates into action, then into accommodation.
Mountainhead is available to watch on Max.
This post belongs to FandomWire and first appeared on FandomWire
