An interview from todays Daily Record
(dailyrecord.co.uk)
Tipped for Oscar glory for his portrayal of Johnny Cash, Joaquin Phoenix reveals the evening he spent with The Man in Black and his family
By Siobhan Synnot
WHEN Joaquin Phoenix set out to become the Man in Black, the only easy step was the first one - he bought a guitar.
But as well as learning guitar, Joaquin had to learn to sing in the style of the most distinctive voice ever, the gravelly rumble behind such classic songs as Folsom Prison Blues, Ring of Fire and A Boy Named Sue.
The director of Walk The Line - the story of Country and Western legend Johnny Cash - wanted the actors to be convincing, so miming to old records just wouldn't do.
Unfortunately, Joaquin's natural voice is high and warbling - normally he's at least two octaves higher than Cash.
He admits: "In ordinary life, I would try and sing along with bands that I like, but it was so atrocious that I couldn't.
"At first it was ridiculous.
"But I did a lot of work with a vocal coach. It's like working out, I had to strengthen those muscles."
Finding the right singing voice was key, he says. He also wrote songs of his own in order to give him clues as to how to portray Cash.
The one thing Joaquin feared was that he would end up doing an impersonation.
"I could have gone 'Hello, I'm Johnny Cash'," says Joaquin in the deepest bass voice he can manage. "Everyone does that."
The 31-year-old Gladiator star gave a year of his life to learning to sing, play the guitar and step as much as anyone could into the legendary Johnny Cash shoes.
Now Walk The Line could mark the second straight year the best-actor Oscar goes to a performer playing a recently-deceased music legend.
"It's the most work that I've ever done for a film. It's been the greatest obligation that I've had," Joaquin (pronounced Wa-keen) says.
The performance proves the work paid off- he raises goosebumps in a scene where he nervously begins Folsom Prison Blues during an audition with his first recording boss. And he more than carries off those famous words "Hello, I'm Johnny Cash" when he takes to the stage.
But Joaquin is impatient with Oscar talk, and brushes it aside.
"I hate the idea of competition, of saying that one person is better than another," he says, fixing me with a clear-eyed stare for the first time.
"It's difficult when there are so many wonderful films and performances that are overlooked because they simply don't have the financial backing to campaign. So there are mixed feelings in terms of awards.
"What it does mean is that people are having an emotional reaction to this movie, and it's affecting them in a way beyond 'Oh that was a good flick'.
"That's nice and I think it means so much for a movie that almost didn't get made, that was nine years in the making, that in some ways every studio turned ' down until it finally found a home."
Joaquin chooses his projects as carefully as he chooses his interviews. He's been known to abandon interviews altogether. At other times he has been k notably tight-lipped.
However, today, although a little r nervous, his voice is firm and clear, I and he's in a teasing mood.
"My favourite film? The Sound of Music," he laughs.
"No, not really - but I thought you'd like that."
A jolly Joaquin seems at odds with his reputation for brooding characters in such films as To Die For, Signs and The Village. He certainly had few problems finding the dark corners of Cash, a man torn by childhood tragedy, whose life nearly unravelled through addiction to pills.
Joaquin also has his own experience of addiction and loss. Just eight months ago he checked into a rehab clinic to beat a booze battle. And his carefree teenage years came to an abrupt halt with the death of his older brother, rising actor River Phoenix.
River collapsed outside Johnny Depp's Los Angeles nightclub the Viper Room and died of a drug overdose in 1993.
Joaquin was at his brother's side, and a recording of his frantic phone call to the emergency services was broadcast around the world.
"You must get here, please, you must get here," he said, somehow remembering to say "please" and "thank you" to the emergency operator.
Joaquin quit films immediately and took a long break. He admits he still struggles to cope with the loss.
"I'll never understand why it happened," he says.
"In the beginning I felt robbed of my memories because a public death is a really difficult thing to go through. People wanted to know things and you just feel so robbed."
It was three years before he returned to work in the black comedy To Die For, which catapulted both he and co-star Nicole Kidman into the A-list.
He hasn't looked back since.
But Walk The Line must have reminded him of his tragic older brother - because Johnny Cash also lost a beloved older brother in an accident when he was 10.
So Joaquin has found himself reluctantly discussing his brother's death again as people ask how that tragedy affected his approach to playing Cash - but dismisses any idea of common ground.
"The development of a character is not something that I've ever kind of drawn from my own pool of experience," he says.
"My experience is very different from John's. I think there's a vast difference with your understanding of life and death when you're 10 years old and when you're 18."
Yet the two men have shared other troubles. Just as Johnny Cash battled drink and drugs in his life, Joaquin felt it necessary to check himself into rehab, fearing that booze was taking over his life. "I don't drink," he says honestly. "But when I did drink, it was like the Olympics. I was a star gymnast in my event."
Now he's getting to grips with more normal things. He's still unpacking boxes as he moves into his first proper home, despite buying it months ago. And although he hasn't got a girlfriend at the moment, he already has a housemate.
"I found a rat in my kitchen the other day. It wasn't startled or anything. It just looked at me as if to say 'Hey how are you doing?', then went into the bedroom.
"So I'm in the smaller bedroom at the moment. I didn't want to p*** him off," he says with a laugh.
Joaquin was born in Puerto Rico to ex-missionary parents, who fled with their five children from a commune in South America after discovering it was a cult. Growing up in a bohemian environment, the Phoenix children sang in the street for money until their mother got them a Hollywood agent. Joaquin quit school to follow River into show business, getting TV and movie roles using the name Leaf Phoenix.
His haunting performance as a high school drop-out obsessed with Nicole Kidman's TV weathergirl in To Die For made critics take notice and his role as the vicious young emperor Commodus in Gladiator earned him an Oscar nomination for Best Supporting Actor - and brought him to Johnny Cash's attention.
"I only met Johnny Cash once," he recalls. "It was just before he died. I hadn't been cast in Walk The Line, but a director friend of mine said he knew me and apparently Johnny really liked Gladiator. So he invited me to dinner in Nashville.
"It was a strange experience. I'm never really comfortable meeting people I don't know, particularly sitting down with 10 family members to eat dinner, but I felt totally at ease with him and his family. Everyone prayed, and he sang a beautiful spiritual with his wife, June."
Cash began by strumming chords and told Joaquin: "I'm waiting for June to get my nerve up".
"It seemed astonishing this man who played to lifetime prisoners in San Quentin needed to do that," marvels Joaquin.
Even more extraordinary, was that the man who would end up playing Cash, found himself listening to the musical legend doing an impression of him in one of his best-known roles.
Joaquin says: "As we ate, he started talking about Gladiator. He told me he had seen it three times, and he seemed to have really got into it, which was very flattering. Then he started quoting lines and he did a pretty good impression. He went for 'Your son squealed like a girl and your wife was moaning like a wh*re'.
"So, one of my cruellest bits of dialogue, one of the darkest most sinister things a character could say, and he was like," That's my favourite part. I really love that part'.
"And this came straight after that beautiful spiritual.
"At the time, it was just an amazing experience, but while I was making the film, I looked back and it had such value to see him and see how he played guitar, and how he was with people around him."
Sounds like Joaquin's dinner with Cash was time well spent.
He told me he'd seen Gladiator three times, then he started quoting lines and did a pretty good impression'
'In the beginning I felt robbed of my memories because a public death is a really difficult thing to go through'
Walk The Line opens on February 3.
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