Joaquin Phoenix is pushing the limits once again for his encore as the Joker, but this round might just be his final bow in extreme film prep. During a Venice Film Festival press conference on Wednesday, September 4, the Hollywood star shared insights on the intense demands of reprising his role in Joker: Folie à Deux.
"I'm now 49, I probably shouldn't do this again. This is probably it for me," he revealed, hinting at the end of his days undergoing drastic physical transformations for a gig. "I'm not going to talk through specifics of the diet, because I just think nobody wants to hear that. But this time, it felt a bit more complicated just because there was so much dance rehearsal that we were doing, which I didn't have last time."
Lady Gaga, his co-star, mirrored his weight loss journey for the movie, adding, "We transformed into our characters over a period of time and we continued to hone in every kind of detail." Her commitment to the role paralleled Phoenix's, though both chose to keep the specifics under wraps.
"I know I was responsible last time for talking about it, but it's difficult to do so that becomes your obsession because you're working the entire time to get to a certain weight," Phoenix explained. "So then you end up talking about it, and then it just sounds like an actor going on and on about how much weight they lost. By the end of that run I was so sick of myself and angry at myself for making such a big deal about that part, because you just do what you're f***ing supposed to do. So this time I was like, 'I'm not going to do that.'"
The Oscar-winning actor then leaned into the mic and said, "It was 47 pounds," pausing for a second before admitting he was only kidding: "No, I'm joking. I don't know."
Catch Joker: Folie à Deux on the big screen starting October 4.
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