Joaquin Phoenix had a lot more to do for Joker: Folie à Deux getting to sing and dance with his screen partner Lady Gaga. But one thing that’s stayed the same prepping for his role of Arthur Fleck is having to lose weight. This time around, Phoenix refuses to talk about his weight loss journey for roles.
It must have been incredibly challenging for Joaquin Phoenix to dance around the set of Joker 2 being a lighter weight than usual to look like Arthur Fleck. During the Venice Film Festival press conference of the Joker sequel, the Oscar winner decided his time losing weight for roles would be over, and here’s why:
I’m not going to talk through specifics of the diet, because I just think nobody really wants to hear that. But you’re right, I’m now 49, I probably shouldn’t do this again. This is probably it for me.
The Golden Globe winner makes a great point about losing so much weight as you get older. While it shows commitment to making body transformations to resemble your character, it can be dangerous for the actor portraying the role.
Leave it to actors like Christian Bale and Matt Damon who know about the dangers of weight loss. We know Bale gained a ton of weight to play Dick Cheney in Vice only to lose much more for Ford v Ferrari. Damon lost around 60 pounds in four months for the flashback scenes in Courage Under Fire only to put his weight back on in three weeks, leading him to be on medication to recover. Our health always has to be a priority as we age.
The first time that Joaquin Phoenix played Arthur Fleck in Joker, he lost a ton of weight for the movie. As he’s done a number of projects since then, it meant going back to his weight loss journey to reprise the Oscar-winning role. While Phoenix spoke a lot about what he did to lose weight back in 2019, the American actor has decided to change the narrative for promoting the sequel:
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 through and you’re trying to get to a certain weight. And so, then you can’t help but talk about it, and then it just sounds like an actor talking about how much weight they lost. And so by the end of that run, I was so sick of myself and angry at myself for making such a thing of it. Because part of it is like, you just do what you’re fucking supposed to do and, like, that’s it. I fell into this trap of talking about it. So, this time I was like ‘I’m not going to do that this time.’
It’s understandable that not every actor wants to hype up their weight loss journey. This is especially true if it was as difficult as Joaquin Phoenix said. For the first Joker, Phoenix said that losing 52 pounds truly did impact his performance, feeling like he was starting to go “mad” shedding those pounds in a short amount of time. Todd Phillips explained his star’s crazy diet involved heavily restricting his calorie intake, eating mainly apples, lettuce, and steamed green beans. Phoenix made sure he was on medical supervision throughout the whole process.
You can watch Joaquin Phoenix's press conference interview in the Instagram video below:
Even though Joaquin Phoenix was able to achieve extreme weight loss to play Arthur Fleck in both Joker movies, it’s good that he’s decided not to go through that process again for future roles. He still has a long career ahead of him and could use his strength to continue blowing audiences away with his film projects. You can see Phoenix and Lady Gaga in the 2024 movie release of Joker 2 in theaters on October 4th.
