The Colt
Vanity Fair, April 2001
JOAQUIN PHOENIX,
actor.
Fourteen films; one Oscar nomination, for Gladiator.
Joaquin Phoenix, 26, must be the most underestimated actor of his generation. For one thing, he has to labor under his late brother River's shadow. For another, as he himself has noted, "every film I do, I meet resistance going into it, and by the time it comes out, everyone says, 'Well, you were the obvious choice.'" It's true. As much as we admired his portrayal of a teenage loser with a wicked hard-on for Nicole Kidman in To Die For 3 and we admired it a lot — we couldn't picture him in Gladiator as Commodus, the most unfortunately named of all Roman emperors except, perhaps, for Probus. It would have been like casting Sal Mineo as a heavy in Spartacus. But not only did Phoenix make believers out of audiences, future employers, and Academy members — his Commodus was, hands down, the year's most memorable villain: compellingly evil yet boyishly vulnerable, murderously twisted but also hurtin' inside 'cause no one really understands him, especially not his dad.
Now we know Joaquin can do anything, and last year he went on to prove it in quick succession with roles as a smooth operator in The Yards and then as the Marquis de Sade's virtuous but conflicted jailer in Quills.
Photographed by Annie Liebowitz in New York City on January 5, 2001.
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