Name: Joaquin Phoenix Talks About Acting and Finding His Characters
Uploaded: 2025-08-28T23:01:05.000Z
Description: Watch the stand-up comedy video 'Joaquin Phoenix Talks About Acting and Finding His Characters' from Theo Von Clips on Comedy Buff. Published 2025-08-28. Transcript available.

Watch the stand-up comedy video 'Joaquin Phoenix Talks About Acting and Finding His Characters' from Theo Von Clips on Comedy Buff. Published 2025-08-28. Transcript available.

Joaquin Phoenix Talks About Acting and Finding His Characters

thank you for your time man no thank you i appreciate it i really appreciate it
um and
thank you for all your beautiful work over the years it's been nice to witness
and consume as
just a regular person in the world oh man thank you you're very sincere it's it's
very nice and
refreshing and also slightly uncomfortable yeah sorry no i know you're married
so i'll keep it
just as sincere you know we won't get physically sincere because that can be it's
outlawed in some
territories but um but no thank you for your time man and yeah thank you for
all the cool work
and helping us think and stuff like that just as viewers you know um yeah it's
funny how sometimes
like life or god or whatever uses like a person as like a an instrument you
know and yeah you just
have such a great way of like yeah just being able to do something that we can't
so many people can't
do but then it helps us the rest of us reflect um on how we do things and live
so does it make any
it's very nice i mean i don't know all all all i'm hearing is um all i want to
say is like no
everyone can do it i don't have anything special i don't do anything special
well you're a lucky guy
then you've been fortunate i've been very fortunate i've worked with great
great people as an actor are
you thinking like in each scene are you thinking i have to embody all of these
like little tributaries or
at once or do you take that like scene by scene or moment by moment what's that
like because i mean
it got so intentious as a viewer you're like i don't even know if i can watch
this much less
trying to be the guy who's uh you know spreading the jam you know
um i think it probably i think it changes like i think there are there are days
where um you're
probably hyper aware of the the arc and you're you're kind of like following
this trail that you're
creating um and there's other days where that gets in the way and you just go
like shut the fuck up
and just like listen to what this other person say right in front of you and
just react to that like
we're not in our own lives we're not always aware of like our arc right so i
think it's like you're
just trying to balance it out and sometimes you can be so in the moment that
you do you forget that it's
like you just came you know we're not we're shooting the scene in six weeks but
you just have come from
whatever it's uh you know intense emotional situation and now you're coming to
this scene
you gotta we have to carry that over so i think that it um it changes us like
something that is just like
uh alive and moving and changing and of course you have like a partner which is
the director and in this
case the writer director ari aster um who just like knows the script obviously
inside and out and the
characters and we had been working going through the script you know for a year
prior to shooting
um we'd get together um i think we were actually in in new york primarily and
just read through the
scripts um and talk about things so you're kind of going through and you're
developing you're developing
the the character and you're following this kind of plan that you have
sometimes in your head some
things you've discussed some things you're just spontaneously coming up with um
and and then you
just then you just hope for the best you just go at some point you go well
because here's the thing
this is the crazy thing about it you'll like you'll have this fucking plan that
you're like
i'm fucking clever i figured this shit out it goes from this scene then i go do
that and that scene
i'm doing that and that scene you have this brilliant fucking plan and you're
like i'm kind of like a
genius yeah and then in editing they'll like pull two of those scenes out like
take them out or like
put them somewhere else and then it's like it's much better and you're like i'm
not a genius i don't
fucking know anything like if this shit works it's because the fucking director
uh is making this work
yeah you know so like that's the it's like it's something very humbling about
that process right and
you have to do the work you have to do the work as if every moment is part of
this character's life
and then there's moments that aren't even in the script and on screen that you're
trying to
i don't know uh you think about and feel and kind of like take on as as your
experience but
you don't really know what's going to end up in the movie um so yeah it's it's
um it's i mean it's a
pretty cool experience it's it's kind of like life yeah like you plan all this
shit and plan your day
and your life and your year and and then shit happens it changes things get
moved around and
sometimes their characters they just get like you're taken out yeah and
sometimes you have a plan like
you're going to show up to like a something and you're everything's going to be
perfect you're
going to have flowers for the this and you're going to have the best thing to
say and then next thing
you know you're running late or you get there your plane gets delayed and now
you show up and you're
the you're you're getting there as everybody's leaving and you're the last
person and you brought the
30th thing of flowers and everything's different yeah yeah exactly
yeah oh yeah can you tell at your with your level of experience can you tell
when you stuck the
landing on a scene like can you like is there a moment when that thing cuts and
you just like
can be like that was pretty good like i serviced it well i've had that feeling
before and um it
always turned out to be terrible and i was wrong like anytime my experience is
that anytime i'm like
fuck yeah okay got it it's terrible um and the times where i'm like i don't i
don't know i don't know
if i even landed i'm not sure what's i'm not sure what happened that's usually
when things when i like
look back at it and i go like oh i think that was good um that's just my
experience i don't know what
other actors are like but yeah i i guess maybe because i yeah i don't know i
don't know if
the things that i like um are like um capturing something that's like feels
like intangible
um and hard to define and like when you kind of like nail it i don't really
like that kind of um
acting or maybe i'm not good at it like i you know yeah maybe there's a sense
of bravado that
comes with that that's not as true to life you know because it's very rare in
life maybe you just
feel like you kind of nail it probably maybe i mean i don't know i guess did so
i think there's some
people that walk around the world like nailed it i know but then hulk hogan
who else
who else is somebody that really freaking nailed it oh nicholas cage and family
man have you seen
that movie oh god we got to sit together on a plane one time um you know what
was interesting
about and thanks for talking about this with me man because it's uh you know it's
just cool to get
to like like it's where you get to look at a piece of art and you get to talk
to the paint you know
that you start the process almost like an audience member yourself because you're
kind of outside this
thing looking in you're reading the script and he's kind of like it feels like
it's like this this
character over there you know i mean and you're trying to get to it or bring it
to you or whatever
that process is i don't fucking know um and so you're you're starting like like
that and you're
kind of going like oh how do i feel standing back here when this guy does this
and like if he
if he said that line in this way how does that make me how would that make me
feel and then like
somehow throughout this like process you hopefully start coming together and
kind of merging to some
point where it's not me standing outside of the character saying not in like
some bullshit like i'm the
character way but just like you're just um hopefully experiencing something
versus like
telling an audience what they should feel right um and i think ultimately the
director is probably
most responsible is totally responsible for telling the audience how they
should feel
right so i think it's part of me is like to just to take on the the experience
and be honest in that
that moment um so you have to really trust that director then huh oh yeah fuck
yeah
fuck or he's outside i think he does not want to be mentioned in here he's
trying to edit from
outside he just bleeped his own name out dude that's fascinating totally
totally wow but that just
shows you how locked in he is to be on the ones and twos um a lot of times with
acting the actors get
blamed for when things go bad right i feel like as a viewer you're like oh shit
you know right like
rodney dangerfield sucked in that you know or whatever well yeah but it's
really the directors
the director doesn't take as much heat i don't feel like um well
so the actor is the one that you're looking at so like if you're like hating a
movie and you're just
looking at somebody's face you're just gonna blame them all right but conversely
like if you're also
like this rules is of the best time they get the credit right so like actors
oftentimes i think more
often than not the actors are getting credit and the director's like i fucking
made all of this work
yeah okay grateful shit it must be like very frustrating like a parent almost
so the child
you're like this totally thing looks handsome because exactly i chased that
lady down the street
yeah and he's just wandering around here with his good looks fucking hiding
important shit in the
backyard yeah because we bought him a shovel for his birthday right like
exactly yeah and i mean
there's you're talking about you know you're having multiple takes to choose
from right yeah and so
you know directors going through and ultimately with the editor selecting this
take sometimes they're
pulling the audio from another take they're putting in there just the just like
what what lens is used
and how it's lit and the angle and whether you cut to a wide shot or you're
close like all of those
things it just happens like even for me i just watch a movie also i'm not aware
of the whole time yeah
it's a good point it's not like you're a wizard watching it or something i'm
definitely not a wizard
yeah but it's so i imagine it's very frustrating uh you know for them um and i
think anyone that's
that's in the business knows this right so when the movie when the movie doesn't
work even if the if
the general public is like you know fucking so and so sucks yeah um the
director probably knows that
they really mean them so they they carry that i think it's probably i think it's
probably the
i imagine it's the hardest job um being a director i think i mean in for making
movies right yeah the
hardest job you haven't directed no did you ever think about it sometimes are
there moments where
you're almost there i don't know that i don't know that i like to delegate and
um and i'm really
indecisive oh um so and it's like uh particularly under pressure and it feels
like there's a lot you
know it's you're constantly under pressure i think as a as a director right um
so but i don't i don't know
they i think what's appealing about it the idea is um the collaboration with
all of like the heads of the
different departments um is it after you you know you're you're collaborating
with costume and hair
and makeup and and like props and stuff and then of course the director but
like the director is just
like everybody and that's that sounds that sounds nice and appealing i don't
know it might be a pain
like oftentimes you know they're like i'll call you back but i have to choose
which forks we're we're
we're using for the dinner scene right you're like which fucking forks yeah
like like i think there's
five forks to choose from i gotta choose which which one we're using yeah like
that that kind of sucks
oh yeah and it sucks if you're watching a movie and you see a fork that fucking
is out of place too
you're like these people this isn't the titanic you blame the actor oh this is
the actor's face
and you're just like i fucking hate this oh you're like