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Director Tom Shadyac goes over a scene with Jim Carrey on the set of “Bruce Almighty,”

Director Tom Shadyac has only one demand: the long, curly hair stays, or he goes.

“I’m like an old Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young album cover,” said Shadyac of his signature mane. “When I was about ten years old, my dad wanted me to cut my hair, and I begged him not to. I wrote him a poem: ‘The summer would be so much better / If you would take heed to this letter.’ Ever since then, I’ve just had long hair.”

Filmgoers may be unfamiliar with Shadyac’s puli ’do, but they certainly know his work: from “Ace Ventura: Pet Detective” to the upcoming “Bruce Almighty,” Jim Carrey’s high-profile return to comedy. Shadyac, a UCLA screenwriting alumnus, has worked with some of the greatest comedians in the business, meeting those musing minds with his own edgy wit and style.

The laughter started in a not-so-edgy place: Falls Church, Virginia, his idyllic hometown. Shadyac’s knack for funny business emerged early on, as he constantly cracked and wrote jokes, especially for the legendary Bob Hope.

After graduating from the University of Virginia, Shadyac moved to Los Angeles to pursue acting and writing. He also worked the stand-up circuit, appearing at the Improv regularly, but found little satisfaction.

“I never really found a voice,” Shadyac said. “I’m Irish and Lebanese, so I would do a lot of the drunk terrorist kind of jokes on stage. But I never really, thankfully, found my voice. I was always thinking about doing something else.”

That “something else” was UCLA film school. When Shadyac entered the screenwriting program, he had two goals: to write scripts, and to make a student film. With inspiration from “Repairs,” directed by fellow student and longhair Brad Silberling (“Moonlight Mile”), Shadyac’s dream of directing came true with his short, “Tom Dick & Harry.”

“That opened a lot of doors for me,” said Shadyac. “But those doors have a caveat – they want to know what you have for them now. I knew I had to either write a script or take the scripts that they have and reinvent them. So I took a script, called ‘Ace Ventura.’”

That script would soon change his life, as well as that of a certain Jim Carrey. Shadyac first met Carrey over lunch at the Ivy in Beverly Hills.

“Let me tell you, the guy scared me,” he said. “I had seen him at the comedy clubs, so I knew he was insanely funny and insanely gifted. He just wanted to throw everything out and he said, ‘Let’s just get crazy.’ That scared me in a really good way. I went home, did a little therapy, called him back, and I hired him.”

After the insanely successful “Ace,” Carrey and Shadyac reunited for “Liar, Liar” and now for “Bruce.” Carrey’s unpredictable antics may seem nightmarish for a director, but the experienced Shadyac knows how to tame the beast.

“You’ve got to direct him,” said Shadyac. “You can’t just say, ‘OK, Jim. Be funny!’ I just direct that genius. Jim will go all over the place, and you pitch your own ideas. You focus the energy.”

Shadyac’s focusing abilities led to other hard-to-control-comedian projects, like Eddie Murphy in “The Nutty Professor” and Robin Williams in “Patch Adams.” But he never helms the same thing twice; his directing resume is noticeably sequel-free while Hollywood clamors for numeric suffixes.

“It’s not necessarily a matter of principle,” he said. “I always like to be challenged, and a sequel, especially right after you do the first one, may not have challenged me enough. I want to take steps, so each movie you see, I’m taking some kind of a step.”

His career is full of those steps, from a talking ass to “Tank Ass” to a man kicking his own ass, and toward the spiritual themes of “Patch Adams,” “Dragonfly” and even “Bruce.”

“I want to always be out there on the ledge myself, taking risks,” Shadyac said. “I think that’s where a lot of funny stuff can come from, living on the edge. You’re either gonna fall or you’re gonna soar.”