‘Joker’ star Joaquin Phoenix spent months watching videos of crazed laughter to get in character
After Phoenix landed the part in the Batman spin-off, he threw himself into it, spending eight months studying personality disorders.
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It’s hardly surprising that Joaquin Phoenix is being lauded for his role as unhinged Arthur Fleck in Joker — the actor’s life has been as dark as any character he has played.
Raised in an alleged sex cult, he watched his brother die in the street from a drugs overdose and battled alcoholism before turning his life around, The Sun reports.
As one Hollywood producer once put it: “There’s a good reason he’s good at playing traumatised. He was traumatised.”
The actor is famous for his obsessive approach to roles. After Phoenix landed the part in the Batman spin-off, he threw himself into it, spending eight months studying personality disorders.
He lost 22kg, something he admits made him “start to go mad”.
Even the character’s sinister laugh took meticulous preparation, formed watching “videos of people suffering from pathological laughter,” a rare neurological disorder.
He said: “I practised alone but I asked (Joker director) Todd Phillips to come over to audition my laugh.
“I felt like I had to be able to do it on the spot and in front of somebody else. It was really uncomfortable. It took me a long time.”
Phoenix’s family was unconventional to say the least.
Parents, John and Arlyn Bottom — known as Heart — were in the hippy cult Children of God until the Seventies.
The organisation has since been accused of encouraging sex between adults and children, and incest.
Phoenix, 44, originally named Leaf, said: “My parents were like a lot of people, searching for something.
“They thought they were going to be part of a group which shared the same ideals.
“Yet if one person gains power and becomes corrupted, it changes completely.”
They lived in Caracas, Venezuela, for a while, where Phoenix remembers being “dirt poor” and stealing food. Then, in Los Angeles, they changed their surname to the mythical bird to symbolise a fresh start.
Heart worked as a secretary for NBC, John was a landscaper and the five musical children would busk to supplement the family income. Phoenix’s first role was aged eight on the TV series Seven Brides For Seven Brothers.
He said: “I watched a fight scene which I knew was acting and not real. But I felt such excitement.
“Even today, there are times when I am shaking with the adrenaline of acting.”
In 1993, his brother River Phoenix, a rising Hollywood actor, overdosed on cocaine and heroin outside The Viper Room nightclub on Sunset Boulevard and died, aged 23.
Phoenix called the ambulance, screaming: “He’s having seizures! Get over here please, please, ’cause he’s dying.”
Afterwards, he dropped out of sight for a year.
Within a few years of his return he appeared as Roman emperor Commodus in 2000 film epic Gladiator and became a household name. Yet two years later he checked himself into rehab for alcoholism.
He said: “I just thought of myself as a hedonist. I was an actor in LA. I wanted to have a good time. I was being an idiot, running around drinking, trying to screw people, going to stupid clubs.”
Now he only drinks on flights, and has stopped smoking marijuana. He said two years ago: “There’s too many things I enjoy doing and I don’t want to wake up feeling hungover.’’
In 2006 he earned a Golden Globe for his portrayal of Johnny Cash in Walk The Line, which also starred Reese Witherspoon. But three years later it again looked like he was throwing away his success when he appeared incoherent on David Letterman’s chat show.
He insisted he was retiring from acting to become a hip-hop artist. But afterwards it was revealed to be an act for his mockumentary I’m Still Here.
But it seemed there had been blurring of the lines between the real Phoenix and his character. “That was a period when things felt very stressful for me,” he said. “I wanted out. So, yeah, there was a bit of crossover there.”
There followed another hiatus, then a spate of critically-acclaimed movies followed, including 2012’s The Master, for which he earned an Oscar nomination, 2013’s Her, and, in 2017, he was given the Best Actor award at Cannes as a contract killer in You Were Never Really Here.
Now Joker is being tipped for Oscar glory. It earned an eight-minute standing ovation at the Venice Film Festival.
The main character has been portrayed several times before, by Jack Nicholson, Mark Hamill, Heath Ledger and Jared Leto.
But critics have labelled this outing, which tells the origin story of how DC Comics’ failed comedian and Batman foe Arthur Fleck spiralled into mental illness and violence, as “terrifying”, “unsettling” and “brutal”.
Phoenix now lives a quiet life with his Girl With The Dragon Tattoo actress fiancee, Rooney Mara, 34, who he met while playing Jesus in the 2018 film Mary Magdalene.
Days revolve around karate, meditating and a 9pm bedtime.
A reluctant celebrity, he once said: “I can still retain a normal life. I am never comfortable with 30 cameras going off at a premiere.”
There may be cameras going off as he picks up his first Oscar.
Not that he will not entertain any suggestion of one. When asked the question, he jokingly gave an Oscar-style acceptance speech reply, saying: “I’d like to thank myself for not answering your question.”
This article originally appeared on The Sun and was reproduced with permission
Originally published as ‘Joker’ star Joaquin Phoenix spent months watching videos of crazed laughter to get in character