JOKER

Joaquin Phoenix is attempting to explain how he discovered his version of the Joker, which will undoubtedly be the deepest, darkest and most distressing version to yet (dis)grace out screens. He ums and ahs, slouched back in his chair at The London Hotel in West Hollywood with his trainers planted on the coffee table before him and his arms crossed over the chest of his Support the Animal Liberation Front hoodie. A lifelong vegan, Phoenix always finds it tricky to chew on the meaty question of what it is that he does so well for a living, and where, exactly, inspiration intersects with intuition.

‘THE WORLD HAS BECOME SO TOUCHY ABOUT SO MANY THINGS THAT IT’S NOT FUN TO BE FUNNY ANY MORE’
TODD PHILLIPS

The 44-year-old actor squirms and runs a thick-fingered hand through his longish, swept-back, grey-streaked hair, then muses on losing 53lb, on studying interpretive dance, and on uncorking an alarming laugh that aches with sorrow and slips in and out of a dry retch as it bubbles up from way down inside. “You always sound so pretentious when you talk about this, right?” he offers with an apologetic smile.

For the three times (soon to be four, surely) Oscar-nominated leading man who stakes a (why-so-) serious claim to the title of Actor Of His Generation, much of his startling performance was unearthed between signing on the dotted in February 2018 and starting the shoot in September. It was during this period that he all but starved himself to lose the weight, trading the hard-packed-muscle-coated-in-a-layer-of-flab torso he exhibited in for something akin to Christian Bale’s toothpicks-and-wire-coat-hangers look in . It wasn’t done for show, you understand, but because this sickly Joker is