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The Village Joaquin Phoenix is back with the director who shaped him. More and more, directors like to put actors through "boot camp" to prepare them for roles in movies. For The Village, M. Night Shyamalan immersed his cast in such 19th-century activities as plowing, sheep shearing, weaving and candle-making with the help of living-history practitioners in Pennsylvania. Still, don't ask Joaquin Phoenix to take care of the south 40 for you. "Listen, to be honest, the whole experience was really just about getting to know each other," says Phoenix, who stars along with Sigourney Weaver, William Hurt, Adrien Brody and newcomer Bryce Dallas Howard. "I plowed 20 feet in a field there for five minutes. I can't say that it was that intense. But I think we did realize how difficult everyday life was back then. It was a struggle just to stay alive." In The Village, which arrives in theaters Friday, young and old members of a close-knit community live in self-sufficient harmony. The village elders purposely settled in an isolated location, and the mysterious, dangerous creatures that live in the surrounding woods help not only to keep intruders out but also to keep villagers in. Lucius, the reserved but respected son of widow Alice Hunt (Weaver), begins to question the rules about not traveling outside the village. He thinks villagers might benefit from medicines and other things bigger towns might provide. Phoenix sees Lucius' quiet rebellion as positive. "It's really his love for the community (that) makes him challenge the elders," says the 29-year-old actor, who was happy to work with Signs director Shyamalan for the second time. Though he's had a string of critically praised performances in films ranging from To Die For and Inventing the Abbotts to Quills and Buffalo Soldiers, Phoenix emphatically credits Shyamalan with making him a bankable actor. "Usually, people are hired due to the studio hiring those people that put asses in seats," he says. "I've always had directors hire me, and it's usually been a fight with the studio. It's been difficult. "Night certainly changed that for me in some respects. I mean, I owe him so much. If it weren't for Signs and working in that film and it doing so well, I don't really know (whether) I'd be here or not. I'd certainly say that I wouldn't have done (the upcoming firefighter drama) Ladder 49, and had I not done Ladder 49 and The Village, I wouldn't be doing (the Johnny Cash biopic) Walk the Line right now." He ranks Shyamalan's influence even over starring alongside Russell Crowe in the blockbuster Gladiator. "That was really the first film that I was in that I think was really successful, and I think it did help my career," says Phoenix. "In some sense also, that could be a character which you never recover from, and people could always see you as that character, and Night with Signs allowed me to play something else and to show a different side in a very successful film, which I think was really important." Phoenix started acting at 8 with a guest appearance in 1982 on Seven Brides for Seven Brothers, a short-lived TV drama starring his older brother, River Phoenix. (River Phoenix's 1993 death from drug-induced heart failure is still an inevitable part of any story about Joaquin Phoenix, who made the 911 call when his brother collapsed.) He made his feature debut co-starring in SpaceCamp and scored his first lead in 1987's Russkies, when he was still known as Leaf Phoenix, a name he dropped after playing Steve Martin's son in Parenthood. But he says he has no talent for telling whether a film he's in will be a success. "If I think a movie's good, no one else likes it and vice versa; so I have no idea," he says. "It's, like, the director's job to be objective and to stay outside, and I just try and get lost in it. I just think of myself as a rodent on the Discovery Channel, and I'm just burrowing away and hopefully they're capturing my life." |