How Joaquin Phoenix Transformed Into the Joker

How Joaquin Phoenix Got Into the Joker’s Head

One consistently ranks among the most iconic villains in all of pop culture, the other is considered to be one of the greatest living actors. Put them together and you get cinematic magic, but playing the Clown Prince of Crime takes its toll. Welcome to Watchmojo, and today we’ll be taking at look at How Joaquin Phoenix Got Into the Joker’s Head.

Come along as we take a deep dive into Joaquin Phoenix’s process to become this character, and the lengths to which he went to in order to inhabit the role, both physically and mentally.

When fans first heard that they were getting yet another live-action Joker, there was a fair amount of trepidation. Jared Leto’s take on the character left a bad taste in the mouth of many, and the idea that this was an origin story set within its own continuity seemed an odd choice. But when Joaquin Phoenix was announced as having signed on to play the titular role, people began to hope for the best. Furthermore, director Todd Phillips promised viewers a mature character study. After screening at both the Venice Film Festival and TIFF, “Joker” took home a number of major awards and just like that, it’s become one of 2019’s most talked about films.

While it’s surely nice to have your work generate buzz, playing such a high profile role inherently comes with a lot of pressure. Comic book fans are an extremely vocal and detail-oriented audience, and Joaquin Phoenix is a famously private actor, one who’s never tried to hide his lack of comfort with the media attention that comes with his profession. And so you can understand why he might hesitate to take on such a role. Todd Phillips has spoken at length about the fact that he really had to sell Joaquin on the project; the actor generally gravitates towards smaller, more intimate films. Apparently, however, after seeing Phillips’ vision firsthand, he came around. After all, this is by no means your run-of-the-mill superhero flick. But even so, it’s been said that Joaquin continued to express reservations about ties to the source material, especially its inclusion of Thomas Wayne.

For most actors, landing a prominent role in a superhero movie all but guarantees one thing: hiring a personal trainer to help you get into superhuman shape. The Joker isn’t your typical muscle-bound evildoer, however, and so Phoenix underwent a very different sort of transformation. After reading the part, Phoenix reportedly told director Todd Phillips that he thought the character of Arthur Fleck should be a bit overweight. Instead however, they settled on the emaciated, gaunt version of the character we see in the film. His physique might not be quite as extreme as Christian Bale’s in the Machinist, but it’s nonetheless shocking. In total, Phoenix lost 52 pounds to bring the director’s vision to life!

As it turns out, weight wasn’t the only thing that Joaquin Phoenix lost while preparing for the role. As he’s explained during interviews, that sort of drastic weight loss also brings with it a certain amount of psychological instability. In 2019, he told The Hollywood Reporter when discussing his prep for the role at the Venice Film Festival, "You start to go mad." While that might sound very appropriate for the role of Joker, it’s not something that any health professional would recommend. And considering the tragic death of Heath Ledger following his performance as the character, people have legitimate reasons to be concerned about the mental health of actors taking on such a demanding role.

For most people, actors or otherwise, extreme weight loss and psychological stress would already be a lot to deal with. Nonetheless, Phoenix decided to take his preparation further. Arthur Fleck is a deeply troubled individual, and in order to bring the character to life convincingly, Phoenix studied various personality disorders. The line between character and actor, however, can often get blurred. Phoenix learned this all too well when portraying the heavy-drinking Johnny Cash in “Walk the Line”, after which he ended up in rehab. And so while Phoenix was committed to this “character study of a mentally ill person,” he also insisted on keeping an element of mystery surrounding the character, maintaining a degree of separation between himself and the character. Considering the performance he gave, that sounds a lot of work in and of itself.

One of Arthur Fleck’s most uncomfortable characteristics is that he breaks into uncontrollable fits of laughter at inappropriate times; it’s a pretty cool twist on Joker’s trademark cackle. Even more interesting, however, is the fact that Joaquin actually studied videos of patients with pathological laughter disorder in order to help him master the deeply unnerving laugh he showcases throughout the film. Clearly, all that homework paid off.

Because this was an origin story rooted in mental illness, Phoenix couldn’t simply “get into character”. Arthur Fleck is a deeply troubled, but dynamic individual, and so there were actually two transformations occurring. One for Joaquin as an actor, and another for Arthur as a character. In interviews, Phoenix has described this as one of the more exciting aspects of making this movie - the fact that the Arthur Fleck’s personality was growing and evolving as they made the film. We’re sure that this approach went a long way in making the character feel well-fleshed out, but it also sounds pretty exhausting! Phoenix not only had to get into character, but then evolve within that role as Arthur underwent his dark evolution to become Joker.

As you can probably imagine, getting this film made was no small feat. Phoenix wasn’t the only one who had to go through a lot in the process. Director Todd Phillips paints it as a true passion project of his, one that got a LOT of resistance from the powers that be. Joker has done some truly terrible things in the comics, but he’s also a brand, and because tamer versions of the character inhabit the world of cartoons, he’s an incredibly marketable one - the face of a merchandising empire in his own right. For all the pushback however, Phillips’ vision not only eventually got the greenlight, but he also secured his ideal leading man.

As both Phillips and Phoenix learned the hard way, making a film about such a problematic character can prove incredibly challenging - even after the cameras stop rolling. While the film is generating a ton of Oscar buzz, it also raises a lot of questions about art and moral responsibility. Phoenix’s performance is a fascinating character study, but in this troubled age of gun violence and mass shootings, there are those who question whether this origin story is one that similarly frustrated young men might identify with. The idea that - terrifying and unthinkable though it might be - some troubled individuals could see themselves in this new version of the Joker and emulate him, rather than see his descent into madness and violence as a tragedy, is a harrowing one to consider. For Phoenix specifically, such debates mean an even more taxing promotional tour than usual, as the actor is being asked tough questions - some of which he’d likely rather not have to consider or answer for.

Joker is the role of a lifetime, and it seems that Joaquin Phoenix has indeed delivered one of the best performances of his career. But in this particular case, the artist has also clearly suffered for their art.