Joaquin Phoenix Biography

Joaquin Phoenix is best known as the villainous Commodus in Ridley Scott‘s Gladiator (2000), as country singer Johnny Cash in the movie Walk The Line (2005), and as The Joker in the 2019 film Joker.

The younger brother of actors Rain and River Phoenix, Joaquin got his start in the entertainment business when he was a kid. Like the other kids in his family, Joaquin (who went by the name Leaf for a time) began making commercials and appearing in the movies in the early 1980s. By the late ’80s he had sizable roles in the movies SpaceCamp (1986), Russkies (1987) and Ron Howard‘s Parenthood (1989). After 1990 Joaquin took some time off from acting, but in late 1993 he was in the spotlight once again, this time because he made the emergency phone call the night River died outside a Los Angeles nightclub.

Joaquin re-started his movie career with a plum role as Nicole Kidman‘s vulnerable boy-toy in Gus Van Sant‘s To Die For (1995).  That led to bigger roles in higher-profile Hollywood movies like M. Night Shyamalan‘s Signs (2002), Ladder 49 (2004, with John Travolta) and The Village (2004, with Sigourney Weaver). In 2006 he was nominated for a best actor Oscar for his performance in Walk the Line (co-starring Reese Witherspoon).

Phoenix stunned reporters in October of 2008 by announcing that he was giving up acting to focus on rap music, but by the fall of 2010 the stunt proved to be part of a two-year “performance art” project filmed as I’m Still Here by his brother-in-law, actor Casey Afflect. He returned to acting in the Paul Thomas Anderson feature The Master (2012) and earned an Oscar nomination for best actor.

Throughout the 2010s he starred in juicy roles in films like the futuristic drama Her (2013), the goofy detective drama Inherent Vice (2014, based on the Thomas Pynchon novel), and the 2017 psycho-drama You Were Never Really Here. He capped the decade with another Oscar win, as best actor for playing the unhinged supervillain The Joker in the 2019 film Joker.