From his performance as a vulnerable high school student seduced into murder in To Die For through his Oscar-nominated turn as the power-hungry Commodus in Gladiator to his stint as a flawed but heroic firefighter in Ladder 49, audiences have been mesmerized with Joaquin Phoenix’s ability to fully embody the characters he plays.
But no one, not even his on-screen collaborators, was prepared for his near-total transformation into country music legend Johnny Cash–down to doing the actual singing and the precise way the musician played his guitar–for Walk the Line, the compelling cinematic account of Cash’s rise to fame and struggles with addiction, a disapproving father and a tortured romance.
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Walking the Line with Joaquin Phoenix:
On how the role affected him: “…If everyone in this room spent time focusing a year of your life on a character and you moved to a city that was foreign to you and you were wearing clothes everyday that were foreign to you, of course it affects your life…” (Full interview)
Walking the Line with Reese Witherspoon:
On playing June Carter: “I definitely thought I was meant to do it. I don’t know why things come into your life, but they do and I felt really blessed to have this opportunity because she’s an amazing person…”(Full interview)
Walking the Line with director James Mangold:
On choosing Phoenix to play Johnny Cash: “…There was a piece in the LA Times on him, maybe during the time of the Oscar thing of Gladiator, and it was a beautiful picture of Joaq with his hair greased back. And it just struck me that not only did he have this physical parallel to John–early John–but it just sort of clicked…”(Full interview)
Even Reese Witherspoon, who herself is utterly convincing as country singer June Carter, the love of Cash’s life, was blown away by how completely Phoenix became the iconic performer. “The first day that we went on set and I was still so nervous, I watched Joaquin walk onstage and say, ‘I’m Johnny Cash,’” Witherspoon told Hollywood.com. “I was like, ‘Oh, wow. That nervous chatter has to go.’ It was like, ‘Now it’s getting competitive.’”
Indeed, some of the cast and crew had a difficult time knowing when they were talking to Joaquin and when they were talking to Johnny. There were reports from the set about an incident where Phoenix had a minor meltdown during a crucial scene, completely caught up in the emotions he imagined Cash must have been feeling.
Phoenix’s total immersion in the role came as no surprise to Robert Patrick, who plays Cash’s stern father Ray, had previously worked with Phoenix on Ladder 49 and already established a rapport where he typically referred to the actor by his character’s name, but things went even further on Walk the Line.
“We did a scene that was really intense, a real showdown between John and his father, and we were yelling at each other off camera,” recalled Patrick. “And everybody on the set was like ‘I thought they were friends.’ I don’t want to tell you what we were saying, but it got pretty vicious. You do what you gotta do to get in the moment and he’s certainly dedicated to that. Joaq’s a sweet guy, he’s sensitive and he’s an artist. He’s real good about being in the moment.”
Others in the cast were occasionally thrown off by Phoenix’s commitment. “I had some embarrassing experiences at the very beginning of taping,” actress Ginnifer Goodwin, who acted opposite Phoenix as Cash’s long-suffering first wife Vivian, told Hollywood.com. “Once we were doing a phone scene, and between the recordings when they would have to set it up again, he would start talking about how far away I was. And I’d be like ‘No I’m not, I’m right here!’ But he meant because his character was supposed to be in Germany. It was confusing for a while, but it’s not disconcerting.”
For his part, Phoenix recognizes the odd sort of imposed schizophrenia that results from delving so deeply into the heart and soul of a character. “It’s a strange thing, because when you’re in a character it’s so hard to come back and think about the separation,” said Phoenix, “because there’s something that happens when you work enough on a character and you spend some time in it–it was like a year of just listening to John and reading about John and really focusing on that…On either side of that, it’s difficult. Getting into the character is difficult, and letting go of your life and the things that kind of define you–whatever it is in life that’s your daily routine, because you sort of find yourself in this other life, and that’s difficult.”
For the film’s writer-director James Mangold, however, Phoenix’s transformation was the kind of acting arcana that Walk the Line required to make Cash’s story as enthralling on screen as it was in real life.
“The first thing Joaquin sang was the scene in the Air Force hanger, when he’s making up ‘Folsom Prison Blues,’ which in fact was the very first day of production,” said Mangold. “I’ll always remember when I said ‘cut,’ because we actually improvised that. We didn’t know we could have the hanger that day. They finally were able to get one of the planes out, and it was magic hour, and we rammed the camera on the tracks, we sat down and we just winged it. I remember when the light was fading, The director of photography turned to me and said ‘We can’t shoot anymore’ and I turned around and yelled ‘cut.’ The whole crew was just standing there, and I had seen this before on sets, where they suddenly knew something amazing was happening.”
For even more insider accounts from the film that’s certain to be at the center of the upcoming awards derby, enter Hollywood.com’s “Ring of Fire” with an extensive interview with the notoriously press-shy Phoenix, as well as Witherspoon and Mangold.
