Joker’s Joaquin Phoenix Reportedly Was Very Difficult To Work With On Set

It’s no secret that actors can be very difficult to work with on-set. There are countless stories of actors having tantrums on film sets and causing a ruckus. It’s been revealed that Joaquin Phoenix may have been a bit like that on the set of Joker.

First off, we know this because the actor admitted so himself during his Golden Globes acceptance speech after he won the Best Actor in a Motion Picture award.

During his speech, which was heavily censored, he issued an apology to director Todd Phillips for being, as he put it, “such a pain in the ass” and he then added he “cannot believe you put up with me”.

However, it turns out that he was a bit harder than that to work with on the set of Joker, and that was especially the case for the hair and makeup department, who reportedly had a rather difficult time with the actor.

This new report comes from Next Best Picture, who revealed that the makeup department found Phoenix to be a rather tough individual to deal with whilst on-set.

Joaquin Phoenix was no easy on the set of Joker

Joaquin Phoenix plays Arthur Fleck in Joker (Credit: Warner Bros.)

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Here’s what they had to say about the actor:

One of the presentation’s major focal points was the difficulty of working with Phoenix. He initially wanted to do his own makeup and hair himself, and the film’s makeup team had to work out a compromise with him.

Additionally, he apparently didn’t like being touched frequently. He lost 50 pounds for the film and was said to be “hungry” often. As such, he would walk out in the middle of hair dying jobs and would disappear on set in between takes, so the crew had a hard time finding him for touch-ups.

The process of maintaining continuity was so arduous that the person in charge of keeping continuity actually quit. The team would bribe him with crackers to get him to keep still (since he could eat little else).

Now, it doesn’t say here that Phoenix was mean to anybody, which is naturally what you might expect to read when hearing that an actor was tough to work with on-set.

However, it does state that his behaviour led to a member of the crew having to quit because they couldn’t handle him any more.

What do you make of this? Does it sound like Joaquin Phoenix was a huge pain on the set of Todd Phillips’ Joker?

Let us know in the comments below.

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