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Joaquin After Midnight Actor comes clean over interview gag. There is an art to interviewing Joaquin Phoenix. He is notorious for walking out of interview sessions or for simply not talking. He balks at personal questions, especially any concerning his brother, River Phoenix, who died in his arms outside the Viper Room in Los Angeles, Halloween night 1993. He refuses categorically to talk about being raised in a religious commune by parents who were missionaries for the Children of God sect. He cringes visibly at suggestions that he is sexy, brooding or intense. Because he is so obviously on the defensive, the trick is to get him laughing. If you can do that and then ease him slowly into personal questions, he is open, candid and friendly. At the press junket for M. Night Shyamalan's psychological thriller, The Village, Phoenix, 29, had bolted early from one table when a celebrity reporter asked how it felt to be voted the World's Sexiest Vegan. He spent just seven minutes with a room of radio types before announcing the interview was over. He terminated several of his television interviews early. We started our interview by asking him how difficult The Village boot camp was. Other cast members, including Sigourney Weaver, who plays his mother, talked about living in tents for a week and behaving like an extended family of 19th-century villagers. She said it was difficult for several cast members not to have access to their cellphones and fax machines. "I don't know how to use a fax and I threw my phone out the window a long time ago, so it was no hardship for me," said Phoenix, adding, "we may have been in tents but there was a five-star chef around the corner preparing our meals. "We got to help him prepare the ingredients and wash up after, which might have proved a hardship for some people but it's how I was raised." The villagers in Shyamalan's film, opening Friday, are terrified of the woods surrounding their village because of the creatures that inhabit them. The press material for The Village explained how Phoenix had to overcome his fear of wooded areas. "I don't know where that story came from. I have never been afraid of forests. I know it makes for good copy and I played along with it during the TV interviews, but it made me feel dirty to lie like that. So I'm coming clean. There's no truth to it. In fact, I spent a great deal of my time alone in the woods. Let's not go the other extreme. I was not out there naked in the middle of the night howling at the moon. I just went out there to smoke. I liked the solitude." One evening during The Village shoot, Adrien Brody, who plays one of the villagers, asked Phoenix if he'd help collect some kindling in the woods. "I knew they planned to abandon me in the woods. Adrien has that kind of juvenile humour. It was a real junior-high scenario but I played along. The thing I didn't plan on was them taking my cigarettes and hiding them," recalls Phoenix, who is a chain smoker. The Village is the second time Phoenix has worked with Shyamalan. He previously played Mel Gibson's younger brother in Signs. "He (Shyamalan) said he would keep me in mind for future projects, but I've heard that from far too many directors and things never panned out," said Phoenix, who is currently filming Walk the Line, in which he plays Johnny Cash to Reese Witherspoon's June Carter. "I told him I longed to play a mute. My character in The Village says very little so I feel as if he was trying his best to accommodate me." Any chance to clam up. |