According to the hair and makeup team on Joaquin Phoenix’s Joker, the actor was difficult to work with.
While fans and critics have praised Joaquin Phoenix’s performance in Todd Phillips’ Joker, the actor was reportedly difficult to work with according to the hair and makeup team that worked on the film. With Joaquin Phoenix’s dedicated approach to portraying Arthur Fleck in Todd Phillips’ Joker it isn’t surprising that he became wrapped up in the intensity of the role, but that didn’t go down well when it came to working with the rest of the crew.
According to Next Best Picture, the presentations for the best hair and makeup nominees at the Oscars revealed that Joaquin Phoenix’s attitude on Joker was difficult to work with for the crew. Since he would often disappear between takes, the hair and makeup team frequently couldn’t find him for touch-ups and ensuring his look maintained with the continuity of the film while shooting Joker. Take a look at why Joaquin Phoenix was difficult to work with on Todd Phillips’ Joker below.
“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).”
What did you think of Joaquin Phoenix’s Joker performance? What are your predictions for Joker‘s chances at the Oscars? Sound off in the comments below!
Here is the official synopsis for Joaquin Phoenix’s Joker:
Director Todd Phillips “Joker” centers around the iconic arch nemesis and is an original, standalone fictional story not seen before on the big screen. Phillips’ exploration of Arthur Fleck, who is indelibly portrayed by Joaquin Phoenix, is of a man struggling to find his way in Gotham’s fractured society. A clown-for-hire by day, he aspires to be a stand-up comic at night…but finds the joke always seems to be on him. Caught in a cyclical existence between apathy and cruelty, Arthur makes one bad decision that brings about a chain reaction of escalating events in this gritty character study.
Directed by Todd Phillips from a script he co-wrote with Scott Silver, Joker stars Joaquin Phoenix, Robert De Niro, Zazie Beetz, Bill Camp, Frances Conroy, Brett Cullen, Glenn Fleshler, Douglas Hodge, Marc Maron, Josh Pais, and Shea Whigham.
Source: Next Best Picture
