The performance that left Joaquin Phoenix “really fucking panicked”
Starting his acting career as a child, Joaquin Phoenix put his dreams of Hollywood on pause when his brother, River Phoenix, died from a drug overdose in 1993. While River had received significant acclaim as a rising Hollywood icon, Joaquin’s career had barely begun. However, in 1995, the younger Phoenix decided to resume his pursuit of the arts, landing a role in Gus Van Sant’s To Die For – the same filmmaker who directed his brother in My Own Private Idaho.
It was his role in Gladiator, released in 2000, which allowed Phoenix to truly prove himself, and he subsequently began landing more high-profile jobs. He appeared in films like Signs and Walk The Line before beginning his collaborative partnership with Paul Thomas Anderson.
The filmmaker, who had received significant acclaim in the late 1990s with Boogie Nights, cast Phoenix in The Master. Released in 2012, the film saw Phoenix play Freddie Quell, a World War Two veteran who gets swept up into a cult led by Philip Seymour Hoffman’s Lancaster Dodd. The movie was nominated for many prestigious awards, with Phoenix’s performance receiving much acclaim. He earned a nomination for ‘Best Actor’ from the Academy Awards and won many others.
Anderson took inspiration from various sources, such as Scientology leader L. Ron Hubbard and V by Thomas Pynchon, who also wrote the novel Inherent Vice. Alongside Phoenix and Hoffman, actors like Laura Dern, Amy Adams, Rami Malek, and Jesse Plemons also starred.
The filmmaker was obviously impressed with Phoenix’s performance, casting him in his adaptation of Inherent Vice two years later as the lead character, Larry ‘Doc’ Sportello, alongside Josh Brolin and Owen Wilson. However, Phoenix wasn’t so sure that his performance was as flawless as everyone seemed to suggest. Talking to The Playlist, he admitted that “On The Master—you must understand—there’s scenes and work I did that were so bad.”
He added: “And I remember being really fucking panicked. But by and large he got rid of the bad stuff. He won’t tell you, ‘Stop doing that thing that’s bad’, because he’ll just find a way around it. Sometimes you find that you’re fidgeting with something, but he won’t say ‘Take that out of your hand’—he’ll just frame it out so you don’t see what’s happening.”
He continued, praising Anderson’s directorial ability, “It allows you to really go out there and try things that sometimes shouldn’t work, and you just trust that you make it work too.”
The Master is regarded as one of Phoenix’s best roles, but since then, he has only continued to impress critics in films like You Were Never Really Here, C’mon C’mon, Napoleon, and The Joker. The latter won him his first Academy Award, an achievement he rightly deserved after receiving three other Oscar nominations throughout his career.
While The Master might have left Phoenix “really fucking panicked,” it only helped to emphasise how strong of an actor he really is. The actor’s anxieties surrounding his performance suggest that even the most celebrated stars have moments of intense doubt surrounding their abilities.
