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Joaquin Phoenix on checking into rehab after road accident: ‘I was being an idiot, drinking, trying to screw people’
Joauqin Phoenix has opened up about the time he crashed his car and realised he needed to get his act straight.
Joaquin Phoenix won his first Oscar this year for his performance in Todd Phillips’ Joker but his journey to it was never easy. Apart from losing his brother to a drug overdose at the age of 19, Phoenix has opened up about another ‘Rosebud’ moment in his life.
In an interview to GQ magazine, Phoenix talked about the time he checked himself into rehab. It was sometime after the release of his 2005 film Walk The Line when his drug addiction and alcohol consumption went out of hand.
“But I wasn’t engaging with the world or myself in the way I wanted to. I was being an idiot, running around, drinking, trying to screw people, going to stupid clubs,” he said of his mental state back then. He added how it all came crumbling down when he crashed his car and almost killed himself.
He was badly hurt, bleeding inside his car and about to light a cigarette while still on the steering wheel. He said he heard he voice say ‘Just relax’ to him. It was filmmaker Werner Herzog who spotted him in his car and told him he was about to light a cigarette in a car that was leaking fuel.
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Right afterwards, Joaquin checked himself into rehab. While he still smokes to keep his nerves calm, he only drinks when he has to catch flights--Phoenix gets extremely anxious when he has to fly, so much that many a times, the pilot has to assure him of his safety.
Phoenix will reportedly be seen in C’mon C’mon next, as well as a rumoured sequel of Joker. He is a big-time advocate of animal rights and is often seen at slaughterhouses, rescuing animals.
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