Joaquin Phoenix wins best actor Oscar for 'Joker'

[webfact]

Joaquin Phoenix wins best actor Oscar for 'Joker'

By Dan Whitcomb

 

Joaquin Phoenix poses with his Oscar for Best Actor in a Leading Role for “Joker” in the photo room during the 92nd Academy Awards in Hollywood, Los Angeles, California, U.S., February 9, 2020. REUTERS/Lucas Jackson

 

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - Joaquin Phoenix won his first Oscar on Sunday for his terrifying performance as an isolated loner who becomes one of the world's best known comic book villains in "Joker," and invoked his late brother River Phoenix in one of the most emotional acceptance speeches of the night.

 

Phoenix, 45, won the best actor Oscar after three previous nominations, crowning an awards season that has seen him sweep every major prize for his role in the standalone origin story of Batman's archenemy.

 

"I've been a scoundrel in my life, I've been selfish, I've been cruel at times, I've been hard to work with. I'm grateful so many of you in this room have given me a second chance," Phoenix said in accepting his award.

 

"When he was 17, my brother wrote this lyric, he said: Run to the rescue with love and peace will follow," he said in concluding his speech tearfully to a standing ovation.

 

River Phoenix died of a drug overdose at a Hollywood night club in 1993 at age 23.

 

The actor, known for playing brooding or emotionally troubled characters, dropped more than 50 pounds (22 kg) to play Arthur Fleck, an emaciated mentally ill clown who finds fame through a random act of violence in 1980s era New York City.

 

His Oscar win made Phoenix the second person to get an Academy Award for playing the Joker character. Heath Ledger won a posthumous best supporting actor Oscar in 2009 for playing the Joker in "The Dark Knight."

 

Dark and unsettling, Phoenix's Joker is far removed from the comic book characters traditionally seen on screen. Matthew Belloni, editorial director of the Hollywood Reporter, described it last year as "among the most chilling characters I have ever seen in film."

 

Publicity averse and intense, Phoenix has a reputation for completely inhabiting characters that have ranged from country singer Johnny Cash in "Walk the Line," to Jesus Christ in "Mary Magdalene" and an impressionable drifter who enters a cult in "The Master."

 

In 2010, he almost succeeded in fooling the world that he had given up acting to try to become a rapper in the fake documentary "I'm Still Here."

 

A strict vegan and advocate for the environment, Phoenix was born to missionary parents who traveled through Central and South America before settling in Los Angeles, where he became a child actor.

 

(Reporting by Dan Whitcomb and Jill Serjeant; Editing by Sandra Maler)

 

-- © Copyright Reuters 2020-02-11

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[Liverpudlian]

Nice one !

[canuckamuck]

I am not entertained by mental illness. Comic book movies have run the course. Please stop making them.

[Just1Voice]

1 hour ago, canuckamuck said:

I am not entertained by mental illness. Comic book movies have run the course. Please stop making them.

Ahh, no one is forcing you to go see them. lol

[justin case]

all these reboots are getting bored... the joker - original - had a normal face and fell in a tub of industrial waste, no ?

[canuckamuck]

40 minutes ago, Just1Voice said:

Ahh, no one is forcing you to go see them. lol

Just hoping they might free up some cash to make something more original. Hollywood is creatively dead though. Guess I should learn Korean.

[Mick501]

Perhaps the best performance of any actor in the last ten years.

[spidermike007]

This was an incredible movie. It was a bit of a satire on anarchy. Perhaps a topic some of us find entertaining, in this day and age of governments posing as democracies, which are more fascist, and authoritarian by the day. Phoenix gave a blazing and searing performance, and represents the lower and lower middle class in America today. Very disenfranchised, bitter, angry, and disappointed people. Will they rise up at some point? I loved his speech too. A lot of truth in what he said, though I am sure the massed do not want to hear it, from their lazy boys. 

[DrTuner]

Yeah, he earned the oscar. The movie itself was a refreshing departure from the boring PC <deleted> that's pushed out by the studios these days.

[tlandtday]

Not overly impressed with this movie. JP was good as usual but playing an over the top Nicholson like nut is always overrated.

 

The movie itself looked like little more than an unoriginal borrowing heavily from King of Comedy and Taxi Driver in my opinion.

 

And where Joacquin shone De Niro was absolutely awful as the unconvincing late night host and interestingly a 360 from his role in King of Comedy. Jerry Lewis blew him out of the water in this role lol.  DeNiro a hugely overrated actor.

[canuckamuck]

18 hours ago, tlandtday said:

Not overly impressed with this movie. JP was good as usual but playing an over the top Nicholson like nut is always overrated.

 

The movie itself looked like little more than an unoriginal borrowing heavily from King of Comedy and Taxi Driver in my opinion.

 

And where Joacquin shone De Niro was absolutely awful as the unconvincing late night host and interestingly a 360 from his role in King of Comedy. Jerry Lewis blew him out of the water in this role lol.  DeNiro a hugely overrated actor.

The highlight of the movie was DeNiro catching a bullet. In the sense that the DeNiro's acting was so bad it was a gratifying way to end it.

[thaibeachlovers]

On 2/11/2020 at 4:16 PM, Mick501 said:

Perhaps the best performance of any actor in the last ten years.

Either joking or don't see many movies, IMO.

The movie itself was rubbish, though well made rubbish, and the plot was about a man that slowly goes insane. It's insane, IMO, that such a movie is rewarded, and it's only because it's the "Oscars" which disregards all non "big Hollywood" movies.

Most of the movies I've watched in the last year were rubbish, which is because Hollywood apparently only makes politically correct remakes of popular movies now. Such movies are governed by the money men looking for a profit, and not because they want to make good movies. Happily, many of their movies fail at the box office because they are so bad.

Most of the movies I've enjoyed were small independently made movies. The exception would be 1917. 

[Mick501]

2 hours ago, thaibeachlovers said:

Either joking or don't see many movies, IMO.

The movie itself was rubbish, though well made rubbish, and the plot was about a man that slowly goes insane. It's insane, IMO, that such a movie is rewarded, and it's only because it's the "Oscars" which disregards all non "big Hollywood" movies.

Most of the movies I've watched in the last year were rubbish, which is because Hollywood apparently only makes politically correct remakes of popular movies now. Such movies are governed by the money men looking for a profit, and not because they want to make good movies. Happily, many of their movies fail at the box office because they are so bad.

Most of the movies I've enjoyed were small independently made movies. The exception would be 1917. 

I could be suffering from regency syndrome here.  Or perhaps just general a lack of good movies.  Wish they'd just cram every f*cken super hero into a cage for one big death match and be done with it.

[Will27]

2 hours ago, thaibeachlovers said:

Either joking or don't see many movies, IMO.

The movie itself was rubbish, though well made rubbish, and the plot was about a man that slowly goes insane. It's insane, IMO, that such a movie is rewarded, and it's only because it's the "Oscars" which disregards all non "big Hollywood" movies.

Most of the movies I've watched in the last year were rubbish, which is because Hollywood apparently only makes politically correct remakes of popular movies now. Such movies are governed by the money men looking for a profit, and not because they want to make good movies. Happily, many of their movies fail at the box office because they are so bad.

Most of the movies I've enjoyed were small independently made movies. The exception would be 1917. 

Regardless of what you think of the movie, JP was superb.

[thaibeachlovers]

On 2/13/2020 at 1:27 AM, Will27 said:

Regardless of what you think of the movie, JP was superb.

I never said that he didn't do a good job of it, but the part wasn't worth an Oscar. Only in an industry that makes garbage would a man going insane be considered worthy of acclaim, IMO.

Sadly, Hollywood now makes mainly garbage, IMO.

 

Case in point, the publicity about the new James Bond movie is more about having women in it than making a movie that makes people happy to have paid the price to see it in a cinema, rather than waiting till it comes out on tv.

[Assurancetourix]

I really love his game in Gladiator;
and I love him even more since this ( the veal is narak , narak   )