Joaquin Phoenix recalls his first acting big break: “My entire body was buzzing”
Few people would disagree that Joaquin Phoenix is one of, if not the, most interesting, complex, talented actors in Hollywood today. Since mainstream audiences first saw him as the sunken-eyed, sallow-skinned and weasly Emperor in Ridley Scott’s 2000 epic Gladiator, they knew they were watching an actor with an unbelievably special sense of potential. And he did not disappoint.
In the 2000s alone, Phoenix would go on to work with M. Night Shyamalan twice, lend his vocal talents to a hugely successful Disney animation, play country music legend Johnny Cash and collaborate on two James Gray features. The decade after, he would play Jesus, lead both a Spike Jonze and a Woody Allen movie, and work on two Paul Thomas Anderson films: The Master in 2012 and, to date, the only movie adaptation of a Thomas Pynchon novel in 2014’s Inherent Vice.
After ending the 2010s with a bang, winning the ‘Best Actor’ Oscar in 2019 for Todd Phillips’ dark and powerfully subversive take on the DC villain Joker, Pheonix’s status as reigning character actor was hardly up for dispute. Yet, many years ago, he was still finding his find, and a particular moment at age ten would ignite his passion for acting, ultimately giving us all of his incredible performances that we, as an audience, should be thankful for.
During an interview with CBS News, Phoenix revealed how he landed his big break on a 1984 episode of the hit ’80s cop show Hill Street Blues. A police procedural drama that ran from 1981 to 1987, which followed the lives of the staff of a single police department in an unspecified city, the show’s tenth episode in its fifth season featured a young Phoenix as a boy called Daniel.
After being asked, “What do you remember about it?” Phoenix responded: “My memory is that… I felt like my entire body was buzzing. There was a certain kind of power, right? I was in a room full of adults, and I felt that I had affected them. Like, I had changed how they were feeling.” Referring to the action in the episode, titled ‘The Rise and Fall of Paul the Wall’, Cooper joked: “Well, you punched one of them. I’m sure you changed how she was feeling.”
Nevertheless, while a small part on a reasonably obscure show, the moment was enough to inspire in Phoenix a passion and drive to pursue a career in acting: one that would land him several Oscar and Bafta nominations and a ‘Best Actor’ win at Cannes for his searing and unflinching portrayal of traumatised mercenary Joe in Lynne Ramsay’s seminal You Were Never Really Here.
Moreover, it looks like his love for the craft isn’t going anywhere. This year, we saw him collaborate with the emerging auteur Ari Aster for Beau Is Afraid, a trippy, thought-provoking, if slightly indulgent, three-hour epic comedy-drama from A24. Later, we’ll see him reunite with Scott again, this time for another sprawling historical piece in the form of Napoleon. Then, next year, we’ll see him reprise the maniacal DC villain again in Joker: Folie à Deux.
