Phoenix Rising
Turning over a new leaf, it's Joaquin Phoenix
"I don't really have muchof a criminal past," says Joaquin Phoenix. "Worst thing was stealing a candy bar when I was a kid. I remember feeling really scared. My parents found it. But I couldn't bring it back, because I tried to hide it in the trunk under a rug and it ended up melting." He stops for a moment, his aqua-blue eyes lighting up. "I'm such a bad criminal!" Filching the odd Hershey bar aside, the 28-year-old Phoenix reserves all his bad karma for the screen. From his memorable turn as the Emperor Comodus in Gladiator to his career criminal in The Yards, his roughneck in U-Turn, and his blue-rinse porn-shop assistant in 8MM, Phoenix is often at his best when he's breaking laws. Compare it to his rather anodyne turn in Signs as God-bothered Mel Gibson's younger brother and you'll see. It's no doubt why he excels as Buffalo Soldiers' Bilko-like Ray Elwood, a sly black marketeer stationed on a US airbase in Germany just prior to the fall of the Berling Wall. Imagine Howkeye selling smack and you get the picture. Given that his parents took to wandering through various Californian communes in a haze of LSD and later joined the controversial religious cult Children of God, iyt's unsurprising to hear that the Puerto Rican-born Phoenix never considered serving Uncle Sam himself. "I think I try my best my best to be a pacifist. Like Elwood's quote from Nietzche: 'When there is peace, the war-like man attacks himself.' There's something inherent in man that brings war. I don't feel optimistic about the possibility of world peace." At least Phoenix, a dedicated vegan, has found some semblance of inner harmony. For a time after the death of his elder brother River, it looked as the artist formely-known-as-Leaf would not emerge from the shock. It was, after all, his sobbing call to the emergency services that was broadcast around the world that night his sibbling OD'd outside the Viper Room club. Only with Gus Van Sant's To Die For, two years later, did he return to work. Now, with a career that comfortably juxtaposes arthouse and Hollywood (the forthcoming It's All About Love from Danish Dogme director Thomas Vinterberg will be followed by fire-fighter drama Ladder 49 with John Travolta), Phoenix has well and truly risen from the ashes. "I think I look for what challenging and what is complex," he nods. "I like working in extreme situations." Anything else would be criminal. By James Mottram Buffalo Soldiers opens on 18 july