10 Actors Most Comfortable Playing The Grotesque

Joaquin Phoenix is a method actor on par with Christian Bale and Robert De Niro. Famous for appearing on talk shows whilst still in character, Phoenix had ‘quit’ acting on David Letterman, and that awkward moment on Jimmy Kimmel’s show when he talked about breakdancing, Phoenix operates best when he blurs the lines between fiction and reality.

His Letterman performance in 2009 was in character for his mockumentary movie, I’m Still Here, which he was filming at the time. The movie showed a distraught Joaquin leaving the Ed Sullivan Theatre while receiving jeers from the crowd after his poor interaction on the show.

In later years, Joaquin continued to explore darker movies and characters and stole the show as Arthur Fleck in the best movie of 2019, Joker. He lost 52 pounds for the role, and in one memorable scene, Fleck admires himself in the mirror, which seems all too reminiscent of Christian Bale’s body transformation in The Machinist.

Despite being a global celebrity, Joaquin has managed to keep some privacy in his life, which adds to his mystique. Perhaps there’s a correlation between the lesser-known public lives of actors and their willingness to go deeper and darker than others.