2023-11-17 10:24:55
By Le Figaro with AFP
Published 30 minutes ago, Updated 15 minutes ago
Ridley Scott called on Joaquin Phoenix to play Napoleon, twenty years after their collaboration for Gladiator. JUSTIN TALLIS / AFP
The Oscar-winning actor, on screen in the role of the French emperor, believes that his character would be “almost endearing if he were not responsible for the deaths of millions of people”.
With his role as Napoleon, under the direction of Ridley Scott, Joaquin Phoenix confirms his place apart in Hollywood, from Joker to Johnny Cash (in Walk the line). But still doesn’t seem to take it all seriously. At 49, the star is one of the first to return to red carpets and interviews after the end of the historic strike which paralyzed Hollywood until the beginning of November. Greatly anguished, he is reluctant to open up, sitting in a black sweatshirt in the suite of a Parisian palace. At his side, Vanessa Kirby, who plays Joséphine.
On screen, Phoenix plays Napoleon in a film haunted by war and brutality, released even as conflicts rage two centuries later. No need to ask him to draw a parallel between the Napoleonic period and the contemporary world: “If I were in the middle of a conflict, the last thing I’d want to hear is the opinion of an actor sitting at the Bristol“, he replied to AFP. “People are going through so much pain and grief right now. I don’t want to confuse a movie that I’m in that costs a ton of fucking money with what’s going on (in the world). I think you just shouldn’t», he adds.
Read alsoDreary plain and imperial melodrama: we saw Ridley Scott’s Napoleon
Cold and calculating
Three years after the Oscar for Joker by Todd Haynes, Joaquin Phoenix has finished filming the second part of the adventures of the green-haired sociopath, which comes out next year. With this Napoleon, this lover of dark, complex or unfathomable roles, among the most prominent directors, Paul Thomas Anderson (The Master) to James Gray (Two Lovers, The night belongs to us), could run for a second statuette.
It all started with Ridley Scott, a quarter of a century ago. The Briton entrusted him with the role of Emperor Commodus in Gladiator, opposite Russell Crowe, which earned him an Oscar nomination for best supporting actor. “We have done Gladiator 20 years ago… Since then, (Ridley Scott) has made, I don’t know, 21 films about space heroes and heroes from medieval times. Then he had a story about an irritable little bully and he called me. And I said thank you!», says the actor. “I believe that (Napoleon) was cold and calculating like a great military strategist. What surprised me was his sense of humor and his immature side», he continues during this meeting with the press. “What I liked was that even the academics were arguing among themselves. So it’s very difficult to get a clear answer on a lot of things». «Some things are ridiculous. Two weeks before filming, someone said: Did you know Napoleon was left-handed? It then takes a week to disprove that!».
In preparing for the role, “I was looking for inspiration more than information, personal testimonies… How did he eat? What did he like to drink? Almost none of this is used in the movie, but you just want to feel legit, even if it’s not», Describes the actor. In the end, Joaquin Phoenix felt like he was playing the role of a character “very socially awkward». «I consider him a romantic with the brain of a mathematician. (…) He is like a teenager in love, almost plagiarizing poetry» in his letters to Joséphine. “There would be something almost endearing if he wasn’t responsible for the deaths of millions of people».
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