The toughest role of Joaquin Phoenix’s career: “You need everyone around you”
Any actor who subscribes to method will find virtually every performance a challenging one, which comes with the territory of committing entirely to a role. Joaquin Phoenix has gone to great lengths on a number of occasions, even if the results haven’t always been uniformly spectacular.
Two polar opposites sum up his approach to the craft, neatly illustrating its positives and negatives. The first was his bizarre experiment alongside Casey Affleck to craft the pseudo-documentary I’m Still Here, which effectively saw him put his career on hold for almost two years in the name of a gag.
It was an odd experiment that was more befuddling than audacious, but thanks to the sheer batshit insanity of it all, it was destined to become a cult curio. It was method gone full-blown madness that didn’t seem to serve much of a purpose beyond shits and giggles, but at the opposing end of the spectrum, Phoenix reached the pinnacle of the profession.
He never gave off the impression he was a guy interested in comic book adaptations, but after dropping more than 50 pounds and going all-in on Arthur Fleck in Todd Phillips’ Joker, he ended up with an Academy Award for ‘Best Actor’ and headlined the highest-grossing R-rated release in cinema history.
Phoenix has a habit of improvising on set to aid his performances, while he’s also smashed a toiled on a whim in Paul Thomas Anderson’s The Master, survived on a diet of just 300 calories per day to play Jesus in Mary Magdalene, instructed the crew to treat the Folsom Prison extras like real inmates so he didn’t get out of the Johnny Cash zone in Walk the Line, and screamed his head off on the set of Beau Is Afraid to embarrass himself in front of everyone so that he’d never replicate that feeling during production.
It’s not an approach for everyone, but regardless of whether or not an actor leaves their character at the door on the way home or keeps it with them until the director calls it a wrap, one thing nobody can overcome is tiredness. A combination of exhaustion and immersion saw Phoenix name one of his lesser-heralded movies as one of the hardest things he’s ever had to do, as he explained to the BBC.
“Quills was one of my toughest shoots,” he admitted of Philip Kaufman’s period drama. “I’d finished Gladiator, and I went and did reshoots on The Yards for a week, came back to London and started rehearsals for Quills. I was exhausted. We shot virtually in order, some of the most intense scenes were in those last weeks. The last three weeks on Quills, I didn’t know if I could make it through the day.”
Adapted from the play of the same name, Quills took a semi-fictionalised approach to the last years of the Marquis de Sade, imagining his existence behind closed doors of the asylum where he was imprisoned for the final decade of his life. Phoenix played Abbé de Coulmier opposite Geoffrey Rush in the lead, and it was another exacting turn for a performer it turns out was pretty much dead on their feet by the time cameras had even started rolling.
He’d been working flat-out for almost two years at that point, pinballing between a blockbuster historical epic, a street-level crime drama, and a revisionist period romp along the way, with the three features releasing in quick succession between May and October 2000. He was everywhere, but it came at a cost.
These days, nobody bats an eyelid when Phoenix regales his latest deep dive into realising a character, but doing it back-to-back-to-back on three wildly disparate projects in such a short space of time is enough to knock anybody for a loop.
Only once since then has he ever appeared in more than three movies in a calendar year, too, so it must have been an experience he was only willing to relive under very special circumstances.
