A flying start

At 29, Joaquin Phoenix has filled his career with meaty roles, albeit mostly dark ones. But the director of The Village saw in him a hero, not a villain.

NEW YORK - Joaquin Phoenix won't read this article.

He can't stand reading about himself. So he won't know of the heartfelt praise his co-stars in The Village have for him.

From Sigourney Weaver, who plays his mother: "He's a very caring person with a lot of integrity, very sensitive. . . . He reminds me a little bit of Bill Hurt in a way because Bill cares very much about things."

From William Hurt himself, who plays the village's leader: "That's a real compliment - to me. . . . He goes way deep."

And from M. Night Shyamalan, who directed Phoenix in The Village and Signs: "I think he's going to have a Sean Penn-like career."

Phoenix probably won't even see The Village, in which he plays a quiet young man who wants to venture into the woods where frightening forces lurk in late 19th century Pennsylvania. Something else he can't stand is watching himself onscreen.

"It's not a satisfying feeling for me. I just always see things that I missed," the actor said in an interview. "But I think also, I just think that it breeds a self-consciousness that's not going to serve me in my work. There are so many actors that start out as really great actors, and through the course of their career - eight years, six years - something starts changing, and I think it's just that they start watching themselves."

Phoenix, 29, dismisses as "pure luck" his crafting a career filled with serious, meaty roles. He has worked with respected directors, including Gus Van Sant in To Die For (1995), Oliver Stone in U-Turn (1997), Philip Kaufman in Quills (2000) and Ridley Scott in Gladiator, which earned him a supporting actor Oscar nomination for playing the jealous, scheming Commodus. The film won five Oscars in 2001, including best picture.

Phoenix was shooting Gladiator when Quills came to him. Shyamalan saw him in that film, in which he played a priest battling lustful urges, and cast him in Signs as a former minor-league baseball player living with his widower brother (Mel Gibson) when mysterious crop circles appear.

""Signs was kind of my attempt to bring him into that leading man, good-guy role, make him the hero," Shyamalan said. "Because he's kind of intense and dark, people tend to cast him in mean roles or in the villain roles, and I really saw kind of the hero in him."

In person, Phoenix is soft-spoken yet articulate, though he clearly doesn't enjoy talking about himself. He fidgets his way through the interview, smoking cigarettes and stamping them out in a jammed ashtray (he is polite enough to ask whether you mind if he smokes). Sitting on the edge of a couch in a hotel suite, he rolls and unrolls the sleeves of his black button-down shirt, runs his fingers through his dark, wavy hair and looks away for long stretches while answering questions.

When he does make eye contact, though, he reveals light blue eyes that could bore right through you. He shows unexpected flashes of humor with a quick, biting wit. And as a lifelong vegan, he gets passionate about subjects such as body image in Hollywood.

"I'm so sick and (expletive) tired of every single actor with their six pack and how it's just a standard. You just don't see people in movies without sculpted bodies with their shirts off unless they're meant to be some heavyweight redneck, and then they go the other extreme. It's bothersome because I just don't think it really reflects real people," he said.

"I actually had an agent at one point - who I'm no longer with - sit me down and say, "You should go to the gym; your body is part of your work.' "

He took time off after his older brother, River Phoenix, died of a drug overdose in 1993 outside the Viper Room in Los Angeles. The star of Stand by Me and My Own Private Idaho was 23.

"Once I'd taken a break from acting for a few years, I really felt that there was something missing there, and I started again, and I did this movie To Die For," in which he played a misfit teen manipulated by an ambitious anchorwoman, played by Nicole Kidman. "I just realized, that's what was missing," he said.

All five children in the family have been involved in performing in some way. Besides River, Joaquin's sisters - Rain, Liberty and Summer - have acted, played in bands or both.

"We were always really encouraged to be expressive," he said. "Success was never defined for us by our parents. We were never told that you have to go to college and do this or that."

The Phoenix family moved around quite a bit, but Joaquin spent much of his childhood in Southern California's San Fernando Valley. These days, no place is really home. Sometimes he stays in New York. He's currently filming Walk the Line, in which he stars as Johnny Cash, in Memphis.

"I can't sing, but I am singing," he said. "The idea is to not make a movie about the icon but to make it about a man. . . . I have to think about him as just a man or else it would be overwhelming. It would be too much pressure."

Entertainment headlines