Phoenix’s quest for failure

Joaquin Phoenix has an appetite for self-destruction, said Martyn Palmer in The Mail on Sunday (U.K.). In 2010, he followed up his Oscar-nominated role in the Johnny Cash biopic Walk the Line with a bizarre documentary called I’m Still Here. In it, he appeared overweight, bearded, and unkempt, and claimed to be reinventing himself as a rap artist. His public appearances were equally shambolic. Everyone assumed the actor had gone off the rails, until he revealed it was a spoof. Sort of. “I’d been acting since I was a kid,” says Phoenix, 38. “When people are coming up and offering you coffees and holding umbrellas for you, it’s easy to lose your humanity. I wanted to shake things up, to try something that made me scared again. I wanted to be crushed, and to experience failure. Total failure.” He came close: Casting agents stopped calling; his bank account ran so low, he was worried he’d default on his mortgage. It was two years before he would work again. Still, he has no regrets. “They teach you when you are a kid to hit your marks, find your light, and know your lines. That’s fine, but what that’s really saying is: ‘Remove all spontaneity, all life from your performance.’ I achieved what I wanted with I’m Still Here.”

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