Phoenix Rising

Joaquin Phoenix is sitting quietly, pale and distanced. Not at all like the day on the set of The Yards when he and Mark Wahlberg thumped and slugged each other half to death until director James Gray had enough in the can for one of the screen's toughest street-fights. 'I think our fighting really captured the brutality of the street fight,' says Phoenix in his inaudibly soft voice, talking about the gritty drama set in New York's subway yards. 'Although the fight was fundamentally staged, we just went for it street-style and the next day we were black and blue all the way down with huge hung mouths and slammed bodies. We were supposed to do it all in one take, but during the first take we lost our elbow pads ? which was crazy because you can't get those darned things off when you're not fighting. But they literally just went flying when we revved up.'

In The Yards, one of the highlights of the 44th London Film Festival which starts next week, Phoenix plays Willie Gutierrez, good guy/bad guy, best friend of Wahlberg's ex-con character and boyfriend to tough, rich rebel Erica, played by Charlize Theron. Off-screen Phoenix is unfailingly polite and darkly handsome. Beneath the nervous outer ruggedness there seems to be a lot of heart and soul which the camera somehow manages to pick up. I recall him saying, when he did press for his first big film, To Die For, that he was still new at the game and, not quite prepared for the press, he felt positively shell-shocked and consequently came across as evasive, maybe even cold. 'They likened me to the character I played in To Die For [Nicole Kidman's confused victim of desire] and never gave me any credit for developing that character,' he said. 'If, in your early career, you come out with a really well-defined character, that kind of establishes you and you become known for that for ever.

'For a while I didn't care, but eventually it bothered me and I started citing my other work, not that I've played Richard III or Hamlet. But it's pathetic, having to defend yourself for something like that. If I had donned a suit and cut my hair real short and said, "Hey, how ya doin?" they would have seen the differences between the character and me.'

The real Joaquin (pronounced Wah-Keen) Phoenix is nothing like the character he's built for on/off hooligan Willie Gutierrez, a man in pursuit of the American Dream, even if it means cheating and lying. To start with, he's not after the American Dream. 'There's really not much I'd change about my life, but these characters in The Yards don't seem to have the family and relationships and love that holds us together. On the one hand they live in a society that verges on the pursuit of the American Dream, these images of what you could now define as "the good life", but on the other they don't have the moral support or the guidance to make these "good life" decisions. Our parents always encouraged us to express ourselves artistically, whatever it may have been, which seems like a given for all children but unfortunately I don't think that's the case. So many children are raised by a nanny or by a single mother who has to go off to work, like some of the characters in The Yards.

'We were always encouraged to sing and play music and paint. And then that natural thing occurred when you're really close siblings. Whatever one sibling does, the others just seem to gravitate towards it. Whether it's the kind of food somebody likes, like Chinese and suddenly everyone's eating Chinese, or music, suddenly it's The Squeeze or The Sniff. Everybody's listening to it.

'My brother River [the actor River Phoenix who died in 1993 of a drugs overdose outside LA's Viper Room] started the acting thing and we all kinda proceeded from about the age of seven. My mother worked at NBC for a casting director who had met all of us and suggested that she look for an agent. She couldn't find anybody who would take all of us. One said they'd take my sisters Summer and Rain and River, but wouldn't take the rest of us. My parents didn't want to split us up so we waited till we found an agent, an Irish agent, who would take all five of us. I've been there ever since.'

He smiles cautiously, the scar above his lip somehow giving him an edge, making him seem slightly dangerous. This deceptive air of terror certainly worked in his last, and probably most famous, role as the weak and evil teenage emperor Commodus in Gladiator. Russell Crowe, the film's star, tells a nice story about how Phoenix was so nervous about the Commodus role that they had to make a plan to get him to relax. On the advice of co-star Richard Harris, they got him thoroughly pissed and three hours later he flowered, spouting poetry and 'doing things that actors do'.

Phoenix, 26, has virtually grown up on screen. He began his career as a child actor and made his feature-film debut aged ten in Space Camp. Since then there's been everything from comedy (Clay Pigeons), thrillers (8MM), angst (Parenthood) and pathos (Return To Paradise), Oliver Stone's U-Turn with his (then) love Liv Tyler, who he'd just met on Pat O'Connor's charming Fifties romance Inventing The Abbotts. So far, so-so. The sea change in his career came with the role of Commodus and now with Willie Gutierrez. Next comes Quills - also showing in the London Film Festival - with Kate Winslet and Geoffrey Rush. 'It's based on a play about the Marquis de Sade with historical characters and events,' he explains. 'It's quite humorous for the first half with a twist in the last half. I play the priest and administrator of Charenton asylum, a man who is repressing his very strong desires for the chambermaid, played by Kate Winslet. There are no sweaty sex scenes. Just half-sweaty sex scenes! Kate's character and my character are made for each other. You really want them to fall in love and be lovers but this man is married to God. Myself, I'm not into organised religion. For me, I believe in a God of whatever my own thing is.' Which could be the God of the trumpet, his current favourite pastime, or God of the yellow '72 Le Mans car, his passion.

Phoenix comes with a history that reads like the sleeve notes of a Sixties rock album. The second of five mercurial children born to hippie parents on 28 October 1974 in Venezuela or Puerto Rico, depending which version you read, he spent his childhood on the road in an out-there, wonderfully idealistic life in Oregon, Mexico, Central America and Florida. Then came Hollywood. 'In Hollywood the idealistic crunch came. My family had a shitty little apartment in North Hollywood. No kids were allowed so we had to hide in the closet when the landlady came around. We schlepped forever, moving every few months, being evicted regularly for late rent, for kids, whatever.'

Phoenix shares a Thirties house in the Hollywood Hills with sister Summer. His mother is often there, holidaying away from the family home in Florida. 'I've always loved the pressure of making movies. I hate rehearsing. But when you roll that f***ing camera, it's magic. I'm gone and can't be held accountable. I'm a maniac for work. When I've got nothing to do I go a bit kooky. I just stay home and swim and read scripts and play backgammon. Or play the trumpet or guitar or listen to CDs. I'm not the social guy. I'm quiet by nature. I love to visit my sisters, hit the road a bit. I'd rather play with my sister Liberty's kid Rio than go to clubs or shows.

'I've worked a lot this and last year, three in a row. I pushed myself physically and emotionally with just a week off between pictures, so I guess I need a bit of "resting". But what I'd like now is a really big, stupid comedy where all I do is laugh. I feel that lying somewhere inside is a ley line of comedy waiting to be tapped.'