Joaquin Phoenix turns 50: More than just the Joker

Character actor Joaquin Phoenix (50) is considered one of the best actors in Hollywood – if not the best. He has been nominated for four Oscars so far. He was able to win the coveted golden boy for his portrayal of Arthur Fleck in Todd Phillips’ (53) mega-success “Joker” from 2019. In the DC superhero film, which seems to be so much closer to reality than to comics, Phoenix plays a tortured, mentally unstable loner – or in other words: his absolute star role.

Phoenix suddenly became a star in 2000. Director Ridley Scott (86) cast him as Commodus, the extremely evil opponent of Russell Crowe’s (60) Maximus, in his Rome epic “Gladiator”. Probably no one who has seen “Gladiator” will ever forget Phoenix’s haunting performance, which at times frightens even the viewer. For his performance, the mime received his first Oscar nomination for Best Supporting Actor.

In the years that followed, Phoenix shone in a number of demanding roles. He played country legend Johnny Cash (1932-2003) in the biopic “Walk the Line” (again Oscar nomination, this time for “Best Actor”), and in “Heroes of the Night – We Own the Night” alongside Mark Wahlberg (53) convincingly played a New York club owner or gave a face to the shy, introverted, also loner Theodore Twombly in “Her” by Spike Jonze (55) – before he finally climbed Hollywood’s acting Olympus with “Joker”.

Phoenix, who rarely gives interviews, has no social media profiles and even rarely talks about his private life, is supposedly very different in real life than his often tormented characters. Phoenix appeared in front of the camera four times for director James Gray (55). About the mime, whose acting can be so intense and charged: “He’s actually very tender and sweet and sensitive. It’s almost as if he puts his intensity into the characters. As if the work is an outlet for his dark side were.”

Phoenix has been in a relationship with actress Rooney Mara (39) since the mid-2010s. The couple has two children together. In his private life, the big Hollywood star is said to lead a rather unglamorous life. Phoenix says he watches a lot of documentaries. About his own film consumption, he says: “I’m not one of those cinephiles who watches Truffaut all day.”

The lifelong vegan, who was named “Person of the Year” by animal rights group PETA in 2019, is said to grow his own vegetables, have a black belt in karate and have two dogs, Soda and Oscar.

Phoenix also supposedly gets up very early, sometimes at four o’clock. “I like to get up and do all the things that I won’t tell you,” he says. He would go back to bed around 7:30 p.m., which seems incompatible with a typical star life full of social events in Hollywood. But Phoenix says he prefers to stay at home anyway.

However, in 2005, before the release of Walk the Line, Phoenix’s life looked a little different. “I just thought I was a hedonist. I was an actor in LA. I wanted to have a good time. But I didn’t engage with the world or myself the way I wanted to. I was an idiot, running around, drinking, tried to fuck people, went to stupid clubs”, .

He then went to a rehabilitation clinic for alcoholism and now says he only drinks on the plane.

Recently, Phoenix’s acclaimed acting career seemed to have suffered a few setbacks. Ridley Scott’s highly anticipated historical film “Napoleon” did not quite live up to high expectations. “Joker 2” even turned out to be a veritable flop. Only 32 percent of the reviews were positive. According to media reports, the film studio Warner Bros. is expected to record a loss of up to $200 million on the sequel.

This probably won’t harm Phoenix’s career, as directors for whom he was in front of the camera regularly rave about the celebrated mime.

“Working with Joaquin is like working with a beautiful wild animal that you have to give the necessary freedom so that it can develop freely: raw, unaffected and completely natural,” said filmmaker Garth Davis (50), for whom Phoenix became Jesus of Nazareth in “Maria Magdalena” (2018). And further: “He is tremendously intelligent and almost completely instinctive. And he has this tremendous sensitivity, which can be both his curse and his gift, but for me that is what it means to be human. For me there was no other person who could have played Jesus.”