“Why would I do this?”: the role Joaquin Phoenix turned down 15 times
Joaquin Phoenix has lived hundreds of different lives on screen. He’s been a dancing (and recently singing) psychopath in the two Joker films, a man in love with an AI in Her, legendary singer Johnny Cash in Walk the Line, a maniacal Roman emperor in Gladiator — this list could stretch on for eternity.
Though not afraid of the odd blockbuster, Phoenix does his best work playing damaged individuals in smaller projects headed up by visionary filmmakers. That is certainly true of his role in Ari Aster’s Beau is Afraid. Phoenix plays the titular character, a man with crippling anxiety who undergoes a mad quest to cross the country and attend his mother’s funeral. At around three hours long, the movie is a gigantic assault on the sense, splitting viewers right down the middle and providing mainstream cinema with some of the maddest visuals of the entire year.
In a conversation with Variety, Aster revealed that his actor was initially hesitant to take the part. “It was sort of a long courtship,” he said of the process of recruiting Phoenix. “I sent him the script. He wrote me back saying, ‘Why would I do this?’” Fellow director Yorgos Lanthimos, who was also present, simply replied, “that’s a good question.”
“So I got on the phone with him, and I argued why he should do it, and then he said, ‘I don’t know,’” Aster continued. “It was something like 15 conversations that led to him tentatively maybe agreeing.” This drawn-out process must have annoyed the filmmaker, who is also responsible for Hereditary and Midsommar, but on reflection, he understands why Phoenix played so hard to get.
“He really puts all of himself into whatever he’s doing,” Aster said. “The way that he challenges the material – not in a gratuitous way or in a way that’s a pain in the ass. The question usually amounts to ‘Is there anything we haven’t considered here?’ I realised that it’s something that I was really wanting from an actor, and now I can’t imagine making a film without him. We’re going to do another film together, and I’m really excited about it.”
Whilst critics were split on Beau is Afraid as a whole, they were pretty unanimous in their praise for Phoenix’s work. He was nominated for ‘Best Actor in a Motion Picture – Comedy or Musical’ at the 2024 Golden Globes. There is barely a moment when he is not on screen, so the star is forced to carry this insane journey on his back almost single-handedly. It’s a seriously impressive feat of endurance, if nothing else.
As for that other film Aster mentioned, that will be Eddington, a neo-western black comedy set during the Covid-19 pandemic. Phoenix looks set to play the sheriff of a small town in New Mexico with ambitions of escaping his provincial life in search of something more. Alongside Aster’s new best bud, the film will also feature Emma Stone, Austin Butler, Pedro Pascal, and Clifton Collins Jr.
Elsewhere in the interview, Aster explained to Lanthimos that Beau is Afraid could have been made a lot sooner than 2023. “There was a period during which I thought it would be my first film,” he revealed. “I remember giving it to a producer that I went to school with, and she sat me down and said, ‘Yeah, this is nice, but do you not want to make a movie?’ I realise now that I was trying to get it made for $5 million, and there’s no way I would’ve been able to do it.”
