I’ve got a lot of hard-hitting questions. Are you in L.A.?įERRELL: We’re probably right around the corner from each other.įERRELL: It is. PHOENIX: Are they naturally black or are they dyed?įERRELL: They’re made in China. PHOENIX: Did you do any kind of preparation for today?įERRELL: The dinner tonight’s the thing, but we’re going to give everyone black roses as a little present. For kids, they make little cards and they give them to their friends, and then some people just ignore it altogether. Can I ask you a question? What is Valentine’s Day?įERRELL: It’s a holiday, where if you have a loved one, you express love and affection in some way.

I’m going to a group Valentine’s Day dinner with my wife and four other friends. JOAQUIN PHOENIX: Did you know that it’s Valentine’s Day? The notoriously press-averse actor eyes journalists with skepticism, and approaches interviews with weary trepidation-even when the person asking the questions is Will Ferrell. Phoenix, who was born in Puerto Rico but raised in Los Angeles and Florida, has spent most of his life in the public eye, and is known as much for his chameleonic ability to inhabit troubled and traumatized personas as he is for his own disillusionment with fame. He’ll also star alongside his girlfriend Rooney Mara as Jesus Christ in the Biblical drama Mary Magdalene, and in the western The Sisters Brothers. This year, Phoenix continues his independent streak with appearances as an avenging Gulf War veteran in Lynne Ramsay’s You Were Never Really Here, which earned him the Best Actor award at last year’s Cannes Film Festival, and as the quadriplegic cartoonist John Callahan in Gus Van Sant’s exuberant biopic Don’t Worry, He Won’t Get Far on Foot. Phoenix then reteamed with Anderson to play the burnout gumshoe Doc Sportello in a 2014 film adaptation of Thomas Pynchon’s noir novel Inherent Vice, which earned him his fifth Golden Globe nomination. The 43-year-old actor followed that up with two opposing turns: as a woebegone writer in love with an operating system in Spike Jonze’s futurist romance Her and as a volatile pimp in James Gray’s period melodrama The Immigrant , his fourth film with the director. He came back with a vengeance in Paul Thomas Anderson’s The Master , as a drifter who falls under the spell of Philip Seymour Hoffman’s charismatic cult leader, earning in the process his third Academy Award nomination. In fact, Phoenix was just getting started. Thankfully, Phoenix’s public meltdown turned out to be an elaborate hoax, documented with excruciating realism in I’m Still Here , a potent assault on the celebrity-industrial complex directed by his then-brother-in-law Casey Affleck. It’s a testament to his talent- and his eccentricity-that we believed him. Nine years have passed since a dazed and slovenly Joaquin Phoenix sat on David Letterman’s couch and announced to the world that he was quitting acting to become a rapper.

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