Joaquin Phoenix

THE ECCENTRIC EX-HIPPIE TALKS ABOUT REHAB (A MUST FOR AN ACTOR), LIFE AFTER

DEATH (IT DOESN'T EXIST), THAT VIDEOTAPE OF HIS PAINFUL TATTOO (REAL MEN DO CRY) AND WHY

HE WASN'T EVA MENDES'S LITTLE PUPPY (HE WAS JUST TOO BUSY)

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PLAYBOY: You won Oscar nominations for playing tortured, troubled characters in Clodiotor and Walk the Line. Why do you gravitate toward dark, difficult roles? PHOENIX: I'm flattered when people say that about me, but they often give me more credit than I deserve. Early on. there wasn't much strategy in choosing roles. I didn't get offered 400 movies; I got offered four, and I did those movies. Let's be honest: If I were six-foot-two, blond and incredibly muscular, they would have been banging down my door. Any actor who doesn't admit that is wrong But once you've established yourself, you try to break out to the other place.

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PLAYBOY: By the other place." do you mean having the opportunity to do leading-man roles1

PHOENIX: The irony is that I am suddenly being offered all those things usually offered to the six-foot-two blond guy with the big chest. And I'm going. "Are you motherfuckers crazy? I'm finally fucking starting to get into some real work, and now you want me to make movies where I run around with a

fucking gun, chasing dudes?" I can't under­stand actors who. after busting their asses for years, get nominated for an Oscar at the age of 45 and win it. and the next 10 movies they make are fucking crap.

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PLAYBOY: You were born in Puerto Rico and traveled extensively in Central and South America with your parents, who were mis­sionaries for the Children of God cult. Did that experience equip you for the real world? PHOENIX: I don't know what experience could possibly equip anybody for the real world. I grew up poor but had a worldly, rich experience. I adapt very well to many situ­ations, and I am comfortable in a number of environments and with different people. I wouldn't change a thing.

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PLAYBOY: You began acting at the age of eight, but in 1993 you became famous when the public heard you on a 911 call from a pay phone outside the Viper Room, getting help for your older brother River, who had suffered a fatal drug overdose. It's hard enough to imagine what that was

like for you and your family, but imagine how that call and those events would have been exploited today on blogs like TMZcom and in the celebrity weeklies. PHOENIX: It was awful. When my brother passed it was toward the end of an era. and you're right: If it had happened much later, it would have been on a lot of fuck­ing blogs. The amount of information fly­ing back and forth now has just gone beyond comprehension. I suppose there has always been an equivalent throughout history, but in some ways it's hard to swal­low. It makes you feel sick about yourself and about human beings. You look at your­self and say. When have I exploited others and been voyeuristic? If someone starts talking about a mutual friend. I say. "I don't want to know." I don't even read interviews with people I know. I may read an interview with a politician, but if that politician were banging his assistant. I wouldn't read it. and I don't care

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PLAYBOY: You don't care because you think that information is irrelevant to the politicians (continued on page 178)

PHOENIX

(continued from page 117) job performance or because hearing it makes you sick?

phoenix: The thing we should be discuss­ing in the news, what the media should be going after in a heartless way, isn't the family of somebody who has passed away but instead—oh, I don't know—how about a president who's lying? That's not to say my brother's life didn't have value, but it certainly did not deserve to be covered more than world politics and other important issues, particularly when death happens every day to millions of people all over the world and we don't seem to give a fuck about that.

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playboV: Did dealing with your brother's death make you ponder things like, say, life after death?

phoknix: Fuck no. There's just nothing. We're gone. If I do have a soul, I don't think it's interpreting life, feelings or experience. My brain is what's making sense of experience and feelings for me. So when that fucker's cut off, how can I possibly understand or feel anything?

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playboy: Did you have a near-death experi­ence when you flipped your car on a can­yon road in Los Angeles in January 2006? phoenix: It was pretty intense. Bad traffic around three o'clock in the afternoon, all the cars were pretty much parked, and my brakes just fucking went. It was like when you walk off a step, expecting the next step to be there, and it's not. I put on the brake, and it took me a second to go, Wait, this movement usually makes the world all around me stop. But I pumped and just fucking nothing. The horror that went through my mind was seeing this woman in her car stopped in front of me and my thinking, I don't want to hurt anybody. So to avoid the cars, I turned

right into the fucking mountain. Once I hit the mountain and flipped, it was a blast: All the air bags went off, and I was enjoying this great rush because every­thing was fine. It was as if time stopped and nothing happened.

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pIjWbov You've also dealt with substance-abuse issues. In 2005, a few months after completing Walk the Line, you checked yourself into a rehab facility to deal with alcohol problems.

phoemx: Paragraph two, page 148, of the actors' manual reads, "If you want to get nominated for an Oscar, go into rehab." I felt like I needed the nomination, and when rehab didn't seem to be working I decided to flip the car and say my brakes went out. It must have worked, [laughs] No, I just thought I was going to play Ping-Pong and cards and drink lemon­ade in a really nice place for a while. Then they told me I was going to have to say my name, and shit. I was like, "I don't quite think this is what I'm supposed to do." But really, I'm completely fine.

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P1.WBOY: Have you always kept to a strict no-meat, no-dairy diet? Do some people think you're not much fun to be around? phoenix: I don't try to impose my views on anyone else, and I can simply say I feel it's right for me. Of course, I've had slips. When I was about 12 I stayed with a friend in San Diego. They got pizza, and I was like, "I'm having some mother-fucking pizza." I ate two slices and vom­ited for two days. I'm strange in that I crave salad and vegetables. I've never really had a sweet tooth, and I don't par­ticularly like foods that are too rich. I'm a parent's dream.

pl.-\yboy: Did having an older sibling in show business prepare you at all? phoenix: I had no perception of Holly-

wood, and my brother, who definitely was famous, didn't carry himself as such. We didn"t live in Los Angeles, and there wasn't any Hollywood feeling around us. Growing up, Siddhartha was King around for us to read, not Entertainment Weekly.

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playboy Your character in the 1999 Nico­las Cage movie 8MM sold porn. Are you into erotic movies?

phoenix: Porn is fantastic—not fantastic; it just is what it is. It's been around forever, so great, fine, have a blast, but I think my imagination is far better. For some time, though, I was hoping to do porn versions of movies I've been in. That could have been good, like Glad He Ate Her for Gladi­ator. 8MM you might want to remake as 8 Inches. I have a friend who can rattle off porn titles for every movie I've been in. It's fucking genius.

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playboy: One of your current movies, We Own the Night, has you playing a coke-snorting 1980s-era hotshot manager of a club owned by the Russian mob. You and Eva Mendes share a pretty strong sex scene.

phoenix: She was so game. I'd never seen such hunger in somebody's eyes—just taking in every single thing, wanting to experience, explore and play. That was so exciting because it stimulates your hunger. The sex scene was one of the last ones we shot, but it is the first scene in the movie. It was important that we show my first meeting with Eva early in the movie because once my character loses her, he will never experience that passion, that love and joy in his life again.

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playboy: Mendes, who said she needed vodka to quell her nervousness when filming that scene, called you "one of the greatest actors of my generation" but also said working with you was "kind of like

working with a puppy dog or a two-year-old: When you have its attention it's really cute, but otherwise...." PHOKNiX: This puppy dog didn't realize he was a puppy dog or a two-year-old. He thought he was a 31 -year-old actor trying to make a movie. Had I known I was sup­posed to be a puppy dog, I would have been much more cute and more consis­tently attentive. My apologies, Eva, but I had a few other scenes that you weren't in. This puppy dog had a lot of work to do.

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playbov: Was the press right in specu­lating that you and she were romanti­cally involved?

phof.mx: They had us dating before I even met her. That was fucking hilari­ous. We went out the first night to get some food, and there were photogra­phers everywhere. I'm going, Who is this fucking chick? because I swear to God, I don't know who anyone is unless I've already worked with them. Feeling like you're being scrutinized is bad when you're working. It got to a point where we couldn't even hang out, because it became a thing. I'm always amazed at the gossip that is literally created out of nothing.

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playboy: Many guys would consider Men-des an ideal woman. What's your ideal? phoenix: Slightly overweight, boring, no humor, supreme intelligence and extremely small breasts. No, I don't have a particular type. Unpretentiousness, sweet­ness and simplicity are all I look for. I live a really boring life. I'm much more cliched, patheuc and pretentious than you would probably give me credit for. I don't want to do much of anything when I'm not work­ing. It's important that any woman I know shouldn't need to be stimulated outside the house, because I can't provide that.

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playboy: When you date someone new, do you consider yourself at a disadvan­tage because she can check out your movies and Google you? phoenix: I'm sure that's happened, but all I can do is make sure I never do that to somebody. 1 cannot guarantee that people in one building don't have telescopes watch­ing celebrities in another, but the only thing that will make me feel okay is knowing I'm not going to get a telescope and watch anybody. Recently a friend said, "I want to introduce you to a friend, a girl. She's really

nice. Just look her up. Her name is-----" I'll

meet her when I meet her. I'm certainly not going to look her up on the Internet.

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playboy: Reservation Road, another of your new films, is about parents dealing with the death of a child. Does grim subject matter like that do a number on you? phofnix: It was obviously difficult material, but ironically. I had a good time. I loved

working with Terry George, the writer and director—I did Hotel Rwanda with him— because he said that, unlike America, "the rest of die world assumes they're going to lose kids. They assume somebody's going to bomb them. It'sjust a part of life." Amer­ica lives in a shell. So when 9/11 happened, for a lot of the world it was like, "Mother­fuckers, we've had this shit going on for a long time." It was interesting for someone with George's perspective to get involved in this movie, because the danger was that it could simply have been a weep fest.

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playbov: Speaking of weeping, did Casey Affleck really videotape your crying while you were getting tattooed? phoenix: I completely forgot he video­taped it. Yeah, I was a bitch getting tat­tooed. I have no problems with not being manly. I'm content to cry while having a tattoo placed on the inner part of my arm, which is apparently one of the most sensitive places you can get it done. Casey and 1 were in Italy and wanted matching circle tattoos meaning literally "nothing." We were making fun of people who get tattoo symbols on their arms and when you ask, "What is that symbol?" they're like, "It means 'wisdom' in Gaelic," and you're like, "Oh, blow me." Wow, I won­der where that video is.

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playboy: Have you watched Gladiator lately? Your performance as the paranoid young heir to the throne holds up well. phoenix: I've seen only the first half. When my character came into the movie, I left. It's impossible for me to watch that movie—or any of my movies—in the same way anyone who wasn't directly connected to making it would. I'll only remember trying to do a scene—what I got and what I didn't. So I'm never going to be swept away. When it works, the whole fun of a movie is that you stop thinking and get completely lost in its world. It's a bad idea for actors to grow accustomed to seeing themselves on camera, because inevitably you start doing things and become too self-conscious. The only way to prevent it is by not being aware of yourself in that way or at least trying not to be.

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playboy: Has anyone ever tried to con­vince you that if you hobnobbed and socialized more in Hollywood, you might be an even bigger name? phoenix: As I recall, Michelangelo was not particularly social. I don't think John Len-non was particularly social either. The whole point of being creative is that you're off on your own, doing it. As soon as you start hobnobbing, I think you're going to forget about trying to fucking touch the sun.

Read the 21st question at playboy.com/21q.