Three times Joaquin Phoenix took movie-making to the limit
Whether you’re a co-star, director, crew member, or even an extra, working with Joaquin Phoenix must be an interesting experience. The Joker star is infamous for his total, unflinching, borderline insane commitment to the authenticity of his performances, and sometimes that manifests in behaviour some might class as tricky. More often than not, though, it also results in transcendent performances that few other actors could hope to match.
Over the course of his career, Phoenix has pushed move-making to the limit so many times that it beggars belief. The three times that stand out the most, though, involve method acting, unnecessary dental work, and an 18-month-long avante-garde social experiment that rubbed everybody the wrong way.
When Phoenix played legendary country singer Johnny Cash in 2005’s excellent Walk the Line, he embraced all of his method-acting impulses. He attended a rock ‘n’ roll boot camp and played guitar on-set for hours. He read every biography he could get his hands on about the Man in Black and insisted everyone address him as “JR” at all times. Why JR? Because that was Cash’s real name. He later told Entertainment Weekly, “I’m embarrassed about it now. But when I heard ‘Joaquin’, it just didn’t feel right. It’s not a brilliant method. It’s simply that I don’t know what I’m doing, and I use all the help I can get. It’s an act of desperation.”
Interestingly, Phoenix’s method extended to the crew and background players, too. During the Folsom Prison scene, he was adamant that crew members play the prison wardens and that they should stop the extras playing inmates from eating or using the restroom. Why? Because that would foster the right amount of anger and tension in the air, which is required in the scene.
Fast forward to Phoenix’s performance as World War II veteran Freddy Quells in The Master, and he was pushing the limits again. Because the character constantly clenched his jaw due to the trauma of the war, Phoenix figured there was only one thing to do – wire his jaw shut. He explained to NPR, “I actually went to my dentist and I had them fasten these metal brackets to my teeth on the top and the bottom, and then I wrapped rubber bands around it to force my jaw shut on one side.”
In truth, though, dental discomfort is nothing compared to what Phoenix put himself – and the world – through when making Casey Affleck’s bizarre mockumentary I’m Still Here. The two actors came up with the idea to make a satirical documentary about a star who suffers a breakdown and becomes a total trainwreck in public. It was supposed to turn the mirror around to a press cycle that constantly revels in celebrities’ misfortunes, especially those experiencing tough times.
Phoenix’s solution, instead of simply playing that character, was to pretend for 18 months that he was actually having an extended breakdown. He grew a ludicrously bushy beard, announced that he was quitting acting to pursue a hip-hop career, and made an infamous appearance on The Late Show with David Letterman in which he wore sunglasses the entire time, looked like a vagrant, and only spoke barely intelligible nonsense.
In 2018, even Phoenix admitted that he took the I’m Still Here experiment too far. He told The Guardian, “The film started as a running joke…But then it got out of control. It just went everywhere.” While it started as a gag and morphed into a truly mind-boggling performance art, it also angered many people and almost derailed his career. He confessed, “Certainly, that was a period when things felt very stressful for me. I wanted out. I wanted my fucking life back.”
The best thing about Phoenix, though, is that it wouldn’t be the least bit surprising to see him push movie-making to the limit again – even if it makes sense to nobody but himself.
