Joaquin Phoenix: ​‘I always look to work with peo­ple that push me’

It’s a head­fuck try­ing to rec­on­cile Joaquin Phoenix with his char­ac­ter in You Were Nev­er Real­ly Here. The for­mer is at pains to joke and pierce the idea that act­ing is a seri­ous job. The lat­ter, Joe, is just pierc­ing­ly in pain. Like a bleed­ing warhorse with arrows pro­trud­ing from his side, he lum­bers on res­cu­ing under­age girls from New York broth­els, killing those in his way with a whack from his weapon of choice: a hammer.

Phoenix was the only actor Ram­say want­ed. She moved the pro­duc­tion for­ward to fit his sched­ule. In return, she got a per­for­mance of trau­ma that seeps out of the frame and into the audience’s bones. Phoenix is so sought after par­tial­ly because he loads qui­et reac­tions into extreme­ly phys­i­calised char­ac­ters. Joe is mus­cu­lar but run­ning to flab. He is pow­er­ful but slowed down by vio­lent mem­o­ries that won’t quit. Phoenix occu­pies this physique with sear­ing pathos, and (to his sur­prise) he won the Best Actor prize at the Cannes Film Fes­ti­val in 2017.

LWLies: This is a very bru­tal part. Does it take you time to get into it or is it some­thing you can switch on?

Phoenix: I start­ed work­ing out two months before we start­ed shoot­ing. When you’re prepar­ing for some­thing, it’s all you think about. Like, right now I’m get­ting ready to do The Sis­ters Broth­ers [by Jacques Audi­ard]. I was just tak­ing a walk along the water, and found myself say­ing lines out loud. But some­times you show up and then you’re eat­ing a fuck­ing sand­wich and bull­shit­ting with the direc­tor, then you go and do the scene and at some point, if you’re lucky and if you’ve done the work, it’s easy to kind of slip into. Some­times it’s not! Some­times you get there and you do a cou­ple of takes and you go, ​‘Fuck, I couldn’t care less about this. I’m not feel­ing this.’ So I’d talk with Lynne, go through the sto­ry, skim through the script again, and think about, ​‘Okay, what’s led to this moment?’ and hope­ful­ly you find it. But it’s not always there.

What drew you to Lynne Ramsay?

I was talk­ing to Dar­ius Khond­ji, a cin­e­matog­ra­ph­er who I’ve worked with a cou­ple of times, try­ing to find what to do next. I said, ​‘Who are the good direc­tors that you like?’ He said ​‘Lynne Ram­say’. Then, a cou­ple of weeks lat­er by chance, Jim Wil­son, who’s the pro­duc­er, who I’ve known for 20 years, he called me and said, ​‘I’m doing this thing with Lynne, do you want to meet and talk to her about it?’

Do you know why you grav­i­tate towards projects that are all-consuming?

I guess because it’s enjoy­able, right, to work hard. I don’t even know if I work hard. This is bull­shit. Maybe I don’t even like that. I don’t know what I like. I just say shit, man! I just say things. At its best every once in a while – and some­times it’s one take for the entire movie and some­times it nev­er hap­pens – there’s a fuck­ing feel­ing that you get. I imag­ine you can get it in any­thing you do. If you play sports, or maybe if you’re writ­ing some­thing and try­ing to fig­ure some­thing out, and a sen­tence comes togeth­er fuck­ing per­fect­ly and you go, ​‘Where did that come from? It just happened!’

It’s such an excit­ing feel­ing. You feel it all through your body. It’s so joy­ful. I’m always hunt­ing for that feel­ing. I love that moment. It’s worth all the days when you search and noth­ing hap­pens and you feel like, ​‘I’m just fuck­ing… this is ter­ri­ble…’ You have that one moment where, I don’t know what it is, you’re just in your flow and that usu­al­ly hap­pens, when you work hard at some­thing and you’re real­ly ded­i­cat­ed to it. The times where I go, ​‘Ah this is an easy scene, no big deal’ are always real­ly dis­sat­is­fy­ing and I regret it. So, I always look to work with peo­ple that are push­ing them­selves, and push­ing me, because it’s more enjoy­able, and you have a chance to touch that thing, what­ev­er the fuck that is.

Do you pre­fer play­ing out­sider char­ac­ters to more social roles?

I liked this role, because it was most­ly just me on set, and I need the director’s full atten­tion con­stant­ly. If you have to share it too much with a bunch of oth­er actors, I find that dif­fi­cult. Her was prob­a­bly the best expe­ri­ence I had as an actor. That was per­fect for me. I told Spike [Jonze], ​‘It’ll nev­er get bet­ter than this’. I like a lot of the time to walk around set and fig­ure things out. I’m selfish.

How do you do when you don’t have enough attention?

What are you try­ing to get at?

I’m just interested.

I think that I’m fine. Please, you know I’m fuck­ing jok­ing, you know that 90 per cent of what I say I’m try­ing to have a laugh.

I think you’re being sin­cere when you say you like the director’s full attention.

No that is true, I do. I do. I like the option of it. I don’t like a hov­er­ing direc­tor, I like to feel like when I’m in the space I’m not per­form­ing for somebody’s approval, right. That would be wrong. But I like the option of hav­ing them there, most­ly just because I like to talk about things a lot.

You kind of flirt­ed with the Mar­vel Cin­e­mat­ic Uni­verse for a while. Is that some­thing that you regret not doing?

I think they make some great, fun movies. There’s noth­ing wrong… I’m not a fuck­ing, like, cinephile. I’m not a snob and I’m total­ly fine with… I enjoy those movies some­times, and I think they keep the fuck­ing indus­try going in some ways, so I don’t have a prob­lem with it at all. I think that every­body was, is… I’m try­ing to fig­ure out how to say this most diplo­mat­i­cal­ly, okay… I think every­body was real­ly hap­py with how things turned out. All par­ties were satisfied.

You Were Nev­er Real­ly Here is released 9 March. Read our review.