Joaquin Phoenix Had To ‘Humiliate’ Himself And Look ‘F*cking Stupid’ For A ‘Beau Is Afraid’ Scene

Beau is afraid, but Joaquin Phoenix isn’t afraid of looking “f*cking stupid.”

While appearing on The A24 Podcast with Beau Is Afraid writer and director Ari Aster, the Joker star discussed how he prepared himself for a scene.

“It got me spinning in a panic,” Phoenix told Aster. “[I’m a] little reluctant to say this, but because it sounds so f*cking stupid and just like actor sh*t, but I remember, and I was thinking, what I did before was I did a scene, but I wasn’t really volatile. I didn’t really put myself out there. I was still nervous. In some way, I was controlling a little bit. I was controlling what people thought about me. I didn’t want to let people down.”

Phoenix remembers “realizing I had to do something that was f*cking stupid, and I just so didn’t want to do it, but I just knew. And I just started screaming, just the most intense guttural pain scream that I could before we were shooting sitting there because I had to just fully humiliate myself.” That’s when he realized that he couldn’t “look any more stupid than you do now.”

You can listen to the podcast below.

— A24 (@A24) April 19, 2023

Beau Is Afraid is out in theaters now.