During a press conference at the Venice Film Festival on Wednesday (via Variety), Joaquin Phoenix talked about revisiting his infamous Joker diet for the upcoming musical sequel and revealed that he likely won’t be going to such extremes for a role ever again.
Phoenix talked a great deal about his diet for Joker during that film’s 2019 press tour. In order to achieve the character’s skeletal frame, Phoenix lost about 52 pounds by eating mostly steamed vegetables and lettuce. It’s so well documented that Phoenix told reporters in Venice, “I’m not going to talk through specifics of the diet, because I just think nobody wants to hear that.”
However, Phoenix revealed that shedding the weight a second time for Joker: Folie à Deux was actually more difficult. “This time, it felt a bit more complicated just because there was so much dance rehearsal that we were doing, which I didn’t have last time,” he explained.
“So it felt a bit more difficult, but it is safe,” Phoenix continued. As safe as it may be, though, he doesn’t see himself going to those lengths again. “I’m now 49, I probably shouldn’t do this again. This is probably it for me,” he admitted.
Later in the conference, Phoenix expressed a hesitancy to talk too much about his physical transformation because he felt that it eclipsed some of the more nuanced discussion surrounding Joker.
“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 the entire time to get to a certain weight,” Phoenix explained.
“So then you end up talking about it, and then it just sounds like an actor going on and on about how much weight they lost,” he continued. “By the end of that [publicity] run, I was so sick of myself and angry at myself for making such a big deal about that part, because you just do what you’re f---ing supposed to do. So this time I was like, ‘I’m not going to do that.'”
Phoenix declined to put an exact number to the pounds he shed, but at one point told reporters he lost “47 pounds” before quickly adding, “No, I’m joking. I don’t know.”
Joker: Folie à Deux is in theaters on October 4.
