Turning over a new Leaf

When he first started acting he called himself Leaf, and given that his father’s real name is John Bottom, one of Hollywood’s rising young stars probably had a lucky escape in the name department.

Instead of Leaf Bottom, he’s better known by his real name of Joaquin (pronounced waa-keen), and the family’s adopted surname Phoenix. The brother of the late River Phoenix and actresses Rain and Summer Phoenix, the shy 27-year-old Gladiator star is something of an enigma in the film world.

Neither a mainstream star, even though he has featured in some major movies, nor an indie favourite, Joaquin Phoenix seems to slot in between. That suits the intensely private and nervy actor just fine, and is one of the reasons he co-stars with Mel Gibson in M Night Shyamalan’s supernatural drama Signs.

Sporting some of the most impressive dark eyebrows in Hollywood and a circle tattoo on an inner arm, Phoenix doesn’t think of himself as a conventional star.

“I really don’t know where I am in this business,” he admits. “I think I’m probably unconventional. Maybe I’ve just been really lucky.”

Fate certainly has played a part because after the death of his celebrated brother River in 1993 from a drugs overdose. Joaquin has picked up the standard for the Phoenix family of actors. His portrayal of the vexed emperor in Gladiator earned him a Best Supporting Actor Oscar nomination.

That influenced Shyamalan’s decision to bring him in as a last-minute replacement for Mark Ruffalo in Signs, another major box-office hit.

Following The Sixth Sense and Unbreakable, Shyamalan has gone for another moody drama about faith, the supernatural, and in Signs the phenomenon of crop circles and the possibility of an alien connection.

Gibson plays an ex-minister and father who has lost his faith after his wife’s death, until mysterious crop circles appear in nearby fields. Phoenix plays the good natured and simple brother.

So does Phoenix believe in aliens? “I honestly don’t know, I guess I don’t let myself think about it,” he says. “It does seem arrogant of us to think we’re the only intelligent life in this vast universe.”

Like The Sixth Sense, there’s a twist in the tail of Signs which forces the characters to come to grips with their beliefs. This appealed to Phoenix.

“The epiphany is there, it’s just that it’s more subtle and it’s for the character's relationships in this film. What the audience did at the end of The Sixth Sense the characters in the film do here. It’s like ‘Oh my God, this is what it all means. There is purpose’.”

An actor who is known for being careful about his projects, Phoenix was lured in at the last-minute by the script. “Some people churn out lots of movies all the time, and you forget what they were. Each film I do means a lot to me so I try and choose very carefully.

“My rule-of-thumb would have been to decline because in the past when I haven’t had time between movies to prepare I feel my work has suffered,” he says. “I made an exception with Signs because the script was so well written.”

Following his older brother River into acting, Joaquin’s breakthrough role was in Ron Howard’s Parenthood in 1989, but then his acting career stalled. He went to South America and worked on a farm. It was his much-publicised emergency phone call while his brother lay dying outside The Viper Room in West Hollywood in 1993 that thrust him back in the spotlight.

Then Gus Van Sant’s clever satire To Die For relaunched his acting career.

“That film really turned my career around,” he admits. “After Parenthood the scripts didn’t really interest me and I just stopped. Then when I was about 18 I started to get the bug again.”

Following the Oscar success of Gladiator, Phoenix is now considered a box-office draw, but he finds all the personal attention hard to handle.

“I’ve been doing interviews since I was 15 and I still don’t know how to handle most of the questions. It always makes me nervous.”

Outside of making films, Phoenix says his life is fairly normal and his family like to hang out together. His middle sister Liberty plays in a country band and he still likes to play music. When Liberty gave birth to a baby son last year Joaquin cut his sister’s umbilical cord.

As for his private life, his girlfriend, whom he won’t name, isn’t an actress. “I really don’t like to talk about her, all I’ll say is she’s not in the business.”

For a time Phoenix went out with Liv Tyler, they co-starred in Inventing The Abbotts together. But it’s not easy dating someone in the same industry, he admits. “On the one hand they understand the weird gypsy life you lead but it’s hard to be together if you’re travelling a lot and working on films.”

Edgy, unconventional and slightly awkward, Phoenix is least happy talking about himself or what he does.

“I don’t really want to think about it too much because I don’t want it to affect how I think about myself,” he says. “Someone described me as smoking a lot and fidgeting, and it made me feel bad, as if I was doing something wrong.”

This permeates his screen work, he admits. “It happens to me every time I have to perform a new role, I have to work hard to overcome my fears and my inhibitions. But maybe my lacking in self-confidence is my best arm.”