'A delicate Irish flower, too sensitive for this soil': Jim Carrey breaks his silence after ex-girlfriend, 28, is found dead alongside pills and a suicide note mentioning their split as friends reveal her 'paranoid' final months
- Police were called to Cathriona White's home in Los Angeles Monday night where they found the 28-year-old's body
- Two friends of the Irish make-up artist were reportedly the first to find the body when they went to check up on her at the $1.1million home
- White reportedly left behind a letter, saying she had broken up with comedian Jim Carrey for a second time on September 24
- That's the same day that she wrote a worrying message on Twitter, saying she was 'signing off' of the social media site
- It's believed that White died from a drug overdose, since pills were found near her body
- Carrey, 53, issued a statement saying he is 'shocked and deeply saddened' by the passing of his 'sweet Cathriona'
Following
news of his ex-girlfriend's death, Carrey issued a statement saying he
is 'shocked and deeply saddened by the passing of my sweet Cathriona.'
'She
was a truly kind and delicate Irish flower, too sensitive for this
soil, to whom loving and being loved was all that sparkled.
'My
heart goes out to her family and friends and to everyone who loved and
cared about her. We have all been hit with a lightning bolt,' Carrey
said.
Meanwhile,
in England, Cathriona's mother Brigid Sweetman was too upset to talk
about the loss of her daughter when reached by Daily Mail Online on
Tuesday.
But a relative said she is planning to travel to Ireland later this week to be with family.
Sweetman moved to the UK from Ireland after divorcing the father of her three children.
White and Carrey first started dating in late summer 2012, but by March the following year they had fallen apart.
The
couple appeared to have rekindled their romance this past May when
they were seen happily smiling and holding hands on outings in New York
City.
In
one of the pictures of the couple taken in May, Carrey is seen wearing
an Irish hurling jersey representing White's home county of Tipperary.
On Tuesday, the three-bedroom, $1.1million house where White's body was found had been sealed by the coroner.
The house has a swimming pool at the rear and spectacular views overlooking the valley opposite.
Family
photographs can still be seen in one of the bedrooms, including one in
silhouette that appears to be of White and Carrey. It is believed White
was renting the property for $5,000 a month.
Frank Nakama, 81, a gardener who has worked in the street for 40 years, said he last spoke to White on Friday.
Nakama told Daily Mail Online: 'She was quiet but was polite as usual.'
He says that he saw her boyfriend a couple of times and that both would say hello to him.
'To be honest I did not know he was Jim Carrey. I had not seen him for a while,' Nakama said.
He added that White had been renting the place for about four months and kept to herself mostly.
'She didn’t really speak to neighbors. I didn’t ever see her with friends. She was quiet and reserved,' Nakama said.
'It’s very sad what has happened. I am shocked. There was no indication this would happen.'
A
neighbor, who did not want to be named, said that two girls helped
White move in when she first arrived on the block a few months ago. The
neighbor said it seemed strange that she would be living there alone.
'We
had no idea who she was. We thought she must be in the film industry to
be able to afford the house. Maybe Jim Carrey was paying the rent for
her? I never saw him around.
'I
saw her on a few occasions. She would say hello but wouldn’t go out of
her way to speak to you. Most of the people here have lived here for
many years. She was very much the exception,' the neighbor said.
He also said she had seemed paranoid and depressed in recent days.
He told The Sun:
'The last time I saw her was on Friday. I wanted to use the ladder so
she opened the garage for me, but then closed the door very quickly,
almost before I had left the garage.
'She
wasn’t smiling. She seemed paranoid — she’d also installed security
cameras all over the property in the last couple of months.'
Another neighbour said: 'There were fire trucks and police cars up here between 9pm and 11.30pm.
'She was very private and had only lived in the house a few months. I’d heard Carrey was her boyfriend, but never saw him here.
In October
2012, friends from White's home village with a population less than 400
told the Irish Mail on Sunday how they were completely taken aback when
they saw pictures of her hand in hand with Carrey, when the couple first
started dating.
'We
can't believe it,' a former classmate of White's from the Convent of
Mercy in the nearby town of Doon, County Limerick, said.
'Of
all the people, you wouldn't have expected it. Cathriona was always
lovely looking, but she wasn't pushy - she was very shy really, and
quiet.'
But
she was also ambitious. White completed her Leaving Certificate at the
Convent of Mercy before going on to study beauty and complementary
therapies at the Limerick College of Further Education. After that, she
found work as a beautician in Tipperary before packing her bags for
America in 2009.
'Most of her
friends had emigrated and her brother was working abroad with the army
and I think she just thought, "I want something a bit more glamorous."
She didn't make a big deal of it,' another school-friend said. 'She
didn't say she was going to Hollywood - she just said LA. I think
Cathriona always wanted a bit more than Cappawhite.'
'She
is not a fame-seeker or anything like that,' the school friend said,
adding that it wasn't surprising that 'Jim Carrey or anyone else'
fancied her.
Within weeks of moving to America, White started taking acting classes in addition to finding work as a make-up artist.
According
to her IMDB profile, White worked as a make-up artist on the TV series
The Online Gamer, for which she also won a walk-on role.
However,
her professional profile doesn't list any work since 2013, when she
worked as a make-up artist on a short-film called Solitude.
Cathriona's
traumatised mother Bridget Sweetman sent an email to a family friend
stating: 'Hi, Bridget here. My Cathriona is dead. My Cathriona is dead.
Can you believe it? My Cathriona is dead.'
'What am I going to do, what am I going to do,' Cathriona's devastated mother added in the email.
Meanwhile,
local Fine Gael councillor Mary Hanna, who is a friend of the White and
Hickey families, paid a glowing tribute to Cathriona.
'Cathriona
was a stunning looking girl, very quiet, very reserved, and very
gentle, as are all the Whote family. She was very bright girl going to
school,' Ms Hanna said.
'Everybody would remember her.
'Obviously we are in shock that she is not with us any longer.
'She was a very good giver. There was a local girl in the village with a disability and Cathriona was very good to her.
'She was very gentle and very kind.
'The people in Cappawhite are deeply shocked.
'It's
hard to believe that poor child is gone, whatever happened. The facts
remain that a mother is without her daughter this evening. Her sister
Lisa and her brother James are without a sister, her grandparents and
aunts and uncles and cousins are all without Cathriona. That's the
reality of it.
'It's so heartbreaking.
'I don't know what happened, I assume it's tragic circumstances.
'Her sister Lisa is the sibling I think about most this evening, as she is the oldest child in the family.
'Lisa
lives in Cappawhite, she is a nurse and she is married locally with two
beautiful little girls and I sure this evening this is very tragic.
'Poor
Rosemary (Cathriona's aunt) lives with her husband Joe, close to the
family too. They are the finest people you could meet and Rosie would
have been very good to the children and very close to them.
'Obviously we're gutted the news is tried and she is dead. I knew Cathriona as a child. I know the family well.
'We're very disappointed the news is true. We live just down the road from the family.
'I'm staying in the Irish college in Paris where my daughter Sarah is a student.
'Cathriona was a beautiful young girl, very quiet and very gentle when she was going to school.
'Her
grandmother Lilly (Hickey) lives down the road and her grandfather
James (White) lives over the road as well. There would be a huge
extended family on both sides.
'The
Whites are a very well known local undertakers and Cathriona's dad Pat
has passed away with cancer unfortunately in recent years. They were a
very well known and highly respected family.
Pat
married another local woman Brid White after he separated from Bridget.
They have a son together Tadgh, a brother in law to Brid's daughter,
Larina, from a previous relationship.
Emigrating
to America appears to have been tough for the young woman, who wasn't
able to be home when her father Pat died in September 2012, nor could
she attend his funeral.
White's father was in his 50s at the time of his death, but had been battling a brain tumor for the past two decades.
A
digger operator with Tipperary County Council, he was forced to undergo
extensive chemotherapy and radiotherapy treatments over several years,
which meant he often had to take extended periods of leave from work.
Pat White raised Cathriona and her two siblings after divorcing their mother Brigid, who remarried and moved to England.
When
Pat also remarried, the family gained two step-sisters, Larina and
Sarah, and a half-brother when Pat went on to have another son, Tadgh,
with his second wife.
Cathriona's aunt, Rosemary McGrath, told the Mail the family were heartbroken.
'It's a very sad time for us all,' she said, before breaking down in tears.
'I've no no more comment,' she added as she was taken away and comforted by a loved one.
One of Cathriona's elderly neighbours said he was shocked to hear of her tragic death.
The man, who did not want to be identified, recalled fond memories of Cathriona as a child.
'She
used to come to me when she was a child. I didn't hear nothing about
it. All I knew she was away in the States. I was away all day visiting a
friend in hospital.
'Jesus that's terrible,' he said.
'I haven't been talking to her since her sister got married there a few years ago, poor Lisa.
'She lived next door and she used to come back and over on her way back from school.
'That's sad, and her poor father Pat too,' he said.
'It's a sad thing. I suppose they'll be bringing her home, my god, it's very sad.'
'It's a terror,' he told the Mail.
'I
didn't see her for years and years. I didn't know anything about her
life since. She was a kid like all kids. I remember her when she was
seven or eight going back over to school.'
Another neighbour said: 'She'd be the same age as my daughter but there wouldn't be too many people talking about it here now.
'It's a tough set up for the family and we wouldn't know much about it.
'It was in the States so nobody around here would know a whole pile about it,' the neighbour added.
Her father's funeral isn't the only major family event that White has missed out on.
In
2011, her brother James, who is two years older than her, was awarded
the Military Cross at Buckingham Palace by Queen Elizabeth II for
courageous acts while serving with the British army in Afghanistan, but
she couldn't make the ceremony.
It
was a rare honor considering James was born and bred in Ireland, and
left his home country for England in order to join the foreign army.
Living across the pond also means she hasn't had much time to dote on her young nieces and nephews.
However she was able to come home recently when her sister Lisa got married.
A heartbroken friend of Cathriona’s, Daphne del Rosario, said from her US home last night: 'It’s a bad dream, a bad dream.'
Meanwhile,
the death no doubt comes as a hard blow for Carrey, not only because of
his romantic relationship with White but because of his longtime battle
with depression.
In a 2004 60 Minutes interview, Carrey revealed that he had been medicated to combat the disease.
'I
was on Prozac for a long time. It may have helped me out of a jam for a
little bit, but people stay on it forever. I had to get off at a
certain point because I realized that, you know, everything's just OK.
'There
are peaks, there are valleys. But they're all kind of carved and
smoothed out, and it feels like a low level of despair you live in.
Where you're not getting any answers, but you're living OK. And you can
smile at the office. You know? But it's a low level of despair. You
know?' he said
Carrey pictured above in April, around the time that he got back together with White
In addition to quitting Prozac, Carrey said he stopped drinking alcohol and pretty much nixed caffeine as well.
'I rarely drink coffee. I'm very serious about no alcohol, no drugs. Life is too beautiful,' he said.
Carrey
has twice been married. In 1987 he wed Comedy Store waitress Melissa
Womer; they stayed together for eight years and have a daughter, Jane
Erin Carrey, the same age as White, who has a child of her own.
A
year after Carrey's split from Womer in 1995, the actor married his
Dumb and Dumber co-star Lauren Holly, but that marriage lasted less than
a year.
After
than he was involved in a number of relationships with other actresses
including January Jones, Laurie Holden and Me Myself and Irene co-star
Renee Zellweger, to whom he was briefly engaged.
In 2005 he began a five-year relationship with Jenny McCarthy, and became a step-father to her son Evan.
Carrey
started out his career as a comedic actor in such Blockbuster hits as
The Mask, Dumb and Dumber and Ace Ventura: Pet Detective before moving
on to more serious work.
He has twice won a Golden Globe award for acting, for roles in Man on the Moon and The Truman Show.
His
part in the cult film Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, in which
he plays a man undergoing a procedure to erase the memory of an
ex-girlfriend, has also become a career-defining role for the actor.
source: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/home/index.html