Why did Robert De Niro clash with Joaquin Phoenix?
Method acting has its detractors. When it works, the results are naturalistic and thoroughly convincing, the favourite technique of both Robert De Niro and Joaquin Phoenix. But the practice is often accused of making work on set increasingly difficult as actors go above and beyond to commit to their roles, and when the two joined forces for the 2019 movie Joker, tension quickly arose.
Method acting is not a one-size-fits-all approach. While full immersion is the goal, there’s a whole host of techniques at play, as the Stanislavski Method, Meisner Technique, and Laban Movement are proof of. While De Niro is a known method acting advocate, he was always insistent on doing read-throughs of scripts alongside the cast and crew. Phoenix, however, wasn’t.
As Joker director Todd Phillips revealed, this creative difference eventually resulted in De Niro calling him personally, saying: “Tell him, [Phoenix] he’s an actor, and he’s got to be there, I like to hear the whole movie, and we’re going to all get in a room and just read it”. As Phillips described it, he was between a “rock and a hard place”, with Phoenix initially refusing, saying: “There’s no fucking way I’m doing a read-through.”
De Niro was patient, gently reminding him that, as actors, “that’s what we do”. As Phoenix later told Vanity Fair, acting to him should feel more like a documentary: “[In] that you should just feel whatever it is that you’re feeling, what you think the character is going through at that moment.” But he relented, eventually being persuaded to join a table read. As Phillips remembered it, he mumbled unenthusiastically through the script and shuffled into a corner to smoke.
When De Niro allegedly asked to speak to him privately, he declined, saying he needed to go home “because he felt sick after that read-through,” explained Phillips. “He didn’t like it”. That being said, the two actors soon resolved their issues with a tender moment where De Niro kissed Phoenix on the cheek. In a move Phillips called “beautiful”, De Niro assured the actor by telling him: “It’s going to be OK, bubbeleh”.
Although the reconciliation was pivotal, it didn’t mean they spoke more on set. There was almost an agreement not to, with De Niro saying: “His character and my character, we didn’t need to talk about anything. We just say, ‘Do the work. Relate as the characters to each other.’ It makes it simpler, and we don’t. There’s no reason to.”
Despite their brief exchanges out of character, Phoenix clearly reveres De Niro’s acting ability, calling him his favourite American actor, likely because of their shared appreciation for method acting. “I got the impression from him that he did things in scene, certain behaviours, certain gestures or movements, whether the camera was on him and registering it or not.”
