“That’s Werner Herzog!”: the unlikely guardian angel who rescued Joaquin Phoenix from an overturned car
Growing up, Joaquin Phoenix found acting a highly rewarding and joyous experience. He began appearing in adverts and television series before starring in his first movie, SpaceCamp, when he was about 12. From there, Phoenix knew that was what he wanted to do—to become a star of the silver screen.
The early rumblings of his cinematic career were put on hold, however, when his older brother, River, died. He took a hiatus from the industry for several years before returning in Gus Van Sant’s To Die For. Still, it wasn’t until Ridley Scott’s epic movie Gladiator, in which he played a prominent role alongside Russell Crowe and Connie Nielsen, that he rose to become a well-known figure in Hollywood.
Throughout his career, he has balanced roles in high-profile, big-budget movies like Napoleon and Joker with more indie or unconventional titles like C’mon C’mon and Her. His career has been full of heavy hitters, proving Phoenix to be one of the best actors of his generation. He has even bagged three Oscar nominations for Gladiator, Walk the Line, and The Master before eventually taking a prize home for Joker.
The actor is one of the most beloved Hollywood stars currently at the forefront of the industry, but he once got into a car crash that nearly killed him – not because of the accident, but because he tried to light a cigarette within the wreckage while waiting for someone to help him out. Yet, we can thank one of cinema’s most eccentric and revered directors for rescuing him.
When Phoenix crashed his vehicle, he looked out of the window and saw a filmmaker he deeply admired. “I remember this knocking on the passenger window,” the actor told the LA Times. “There was this German voice saying, ‘Just relax…’ I said to myself, ‘That’s Werner Herzog!’” It seems like something out of a hallucination, as though Phoenix was about to pass on to the next life guided by the presence of Herzog himself.
Luckily, of course, Phoenix was fine; most of his shock came from the fact that the Fitzcarraldo director was standing at his car window. Speaking to The New York Times, Herzog shared his memories of the event and how he wanted to make sure that Phoenix didn’t set the whole car – and subsequently himself – on fire.
“He was upside down in this car, squished between airbags that had deployed and wildly trying to light a cigarette,” he recalled. “I knew he must not light his cigarette because there was gasoline dripping, and he would have perished in a fireball. So I tried to be clearly commandeering to him and tell him not to.”
Herzog knew this was a serious situation he needed to take control of. “But I was worried that if you gave him a command, he would strike his lighter even harder,” he said. “So I managed to snatch the cigarette lighter from his hand. Then it became completely clear that it was Joaquin.”
Instead of hanging about at the scene of the crash, Herzog decided to simply disappear. “I didn’t want to speak to him after. I saw he wanted to come over and thank me. I just drove off.”
