When The Filming Is Over, Phoenix Doesn't Look Back
Tennessean, July 29, 2004
By Christy Lemire
Joaquin Phoenix won't read this article.
He can't stand reading about himself, and he can't stand the fact that other actors do it. So he won't know of the sober, heartfelt praise his co-stars in The Village have for him.
From Sigourney Weaver, who plays his mother: "He's a very caring person with a lot of integrity, very sensitive... He reminds me a little bit of Bill Hurt in a way because Bill cares very much about things."
From William Hurt himself, who plays the village's leader: "That's a real compliment to me... He goes way deep."
From Bryce Dallas Howard, who plays the woman who loves him: "He's acting on a different plane. He's almost superhuman."
And from M. Night Shyamalan, who directed Phoenix in The Village and Signs: "I think he's going to have a Sean Penn-like career."
Phoenix won't see any of that in himself, though and he probably won't see The Village, in which he plays a quiet young man who wants to venture into the woods where frightening forces lurk in late-19th century Pennsylvania. Something else he can't stand is watching himself on screen, despite having amassed an impressive filmography and an Academy Award nomination.
"It's not a satisfying feeling for me. I just always see things that I missed," the actor said. "But I think also, I just think that it breeds a self-consciousness that's not going to serve me in my work. There are so many actors that start out as really great actors and through the course of their career eight years, six years something starts changing, and I think it's just that they start watching themselves.
"They start reading their interviews and looking at their pictures. Maybe I'll watch stuff when I'm done with acting, but right now I don't want to think of myself that way."
Phoenix, 29, dismisses as "pure luck" the fact that he's crafted a career filled with serious, meaty roles. He has worked with respected directors who are visual stylists but also have something to say, including Gus Van Sant in To Die For (1995), Oliver Stone in U-Turn (1997), Philip Kaufman in Quills (2000) and Ridley Scott in Gladiator, which earned him a supporting-actor Oscar nomination for playing the scheming Commodus.
"For me, honestly and sorry to sound clich้ but it's just following your heart. I find that at the end of a film, I rarely know what I'm going to do next. I'm not one of those actors that has four movies lined up," Phoenix said.
Phoenix was shooting Gladiator when Quills came to him, for example. Shyamalan saw him in that film, in which he played a priest battling his own lustful urges, and cast him in Signs as a former minor league baseball player who's living with his widower brother (Mel Gibson) when mysterious crop circles appear.
Phoenix is currently filming Walk the Line, in which he stars as Johnny Cash, in Memphis.
"I can't sing but I am singing," he said. "The idea is to not make a movie about the icon but to make it about a man... I have to think about him as just a man or else it would be overwhelming. It would be too much pressure."
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