Did you know that a legendary director had saved his life? That he was vegan since he was 3 years old? Discover 8 unusual things about the hero of “Joker”, broadcast tonight on TF1.
A famous director saved his life
In 2006, Joaquin Phoenix flips his car in Los Angeles and ends up upside down in the driver’s seat. Disoriented, he suddenly sees the head of a director passing by pass through the window. He easily recognizes Werner Herzog (Aguirre, Nosferatu, Mandalorian actor) who asks him how he is.
Phoenix, although very pale, replies that everything is fine and begins to want to light a cigarette. Herzog stops him, informing him that gallons of gasoline are leaking from the wrecked car…and that he nearly blew himself up! What saved the life of the future interpreter of Joker.
He has his firefighter license
Joaquin Phoenix often invests a lot in the preparation of his roles. On the occasion of Piège de feu, the actor worked for a month in a training school for firefighters and a second month in the Baltimore firefighters team. He became an honorary member and got the same tattoo as the team members: a bumblebee wearing a helmet and a fire axe.
But Phoenix is accustomed to this kind of performance. In The Master, to speak only of one side of the mouth, the actor had metal plates attached to his teeth to keep his jaw tight. He lost 24 kilos for Joker or stuck to a diet of 300 calories a day (compared to the normal 2,150) to play Jesus in Mary Magdalene.
Where is his scar from?
Is the mark that can be seen above the actor’s upper lip the result of an accident? Of a surgical operation? From a cleft lip? Many fans wondered, until Joaquin Phoenix himself revealed that it was actually just a birthmark. In addition, by chance Johnny Cash (played by the actor in the biopic Walk the Line) also sports a scar on his lip, caused by the removal of a cyst.
He trapped the whole world
October 27, 2008, Joaquin Phoenix announces that he will stop the cinema to devote himself to a musical career. In January 2009, we learned that Casey Affleck (then the actor’s brother-in-law) was going to go behind the camera for the first time to film Phoenix’s new musical career as a… rapper!
For several months, doubt creeps into the minds of moviegoers: is all this just a big joke or is the actor’s conversion proven? In reality, this is one of the intensive preparations of the actor, who will remain in his character for almost a year and a half. This will result in the “mockumentary” I’m Still Here.
It protects animals
Joaquin Phoenix is an animal lover. Since he saw fish being violently killed at the age of three, he has become a vegan. Last October, he explained to Brut :
I don’t want to cause pain to another living being with empathy. I don’t want to take their babies away from them, I don’t want to force them to be locked up and fattened up just to be slaughtered. It is absurd and barbaric. (…) It’s my life, it always has been and it’s really one of the most important things for me.
Furthermore, Phoenix obviously wears no clothing of animal origin, participates in several humanitarian operations and supports the association PETA (For Ethics in the Treatment of Animals).
He grew up in a cult
Joaquin Bottom was born when his parents were members of the Children of God sect. He grew up there during the late 1970s, in a very “flower power” atmosphere, with a very stingy and anti-consumerist lifestyle in Venezuela.
His parents left the sect after 1978 after the pastor who led the movement, Moïse David, fled the justice of his country and drastically changed the doctrine of the sect. The Bottom parents then change the family name to Phoenix, to mark their post-Children of God rebirth.
His name was Leaf
In 1979, at age 6, Joaquin decided to change his name. Since his siblings (River, Liberty, Rain and Summer) all had nature-related names, the young boy asked to be named “Leaf”. Already on stage and a child actor, Phoenix only gave up his alias in 1991 for Bonnie Palef’s short film Walk the Dog, which for the first time saw the name “Joaquin Phoenix” written on a screen.
He lost his actor brother
On October 31, 1993, his older brother River Phoenix leaves the Viper Room, a nightclub then run by Johnny Depp. He collapses, with a mixture of cocaine and morphine in his blood. Joaquin, then 19, was with him that evening and called the emergency services.
His heartbreaking message of help is transmitted to the media and broadcast. River will never get up and his little brother Joaquin, in shock, will isolate himself and will not return to the cinema until 1995 for Ready for everything by Gus Van Sant.