A Spin in the Driver’s Seat

The story begins, 15 years ago, with a go-cart.

The five little Phoenixes are cooing over their Christmas presents. Their father, a jack of many trades named John Bottom, has no money to speak of but always manages to make something special for his kids. This year, he has cobbled together a go-cart. His 11-year-old son spies it hungrily, a junior Evel Knievel gunning to kick up some dirt.

“Of course, me, the troublemaker,” remembers Joaquin Phoenix with a sheepish smile. “I started up this go-cart. You stand behind it and pull the thing. The clutch was all the way down, and it took off. It went down the street and it literally killed every mailbox. Boom. People came out of their houses in their pajamas. I think I ruined the go-cart.”

Some might say that this is the beginning of a recurring motif. A few years later, a father-son odyssey through Mexico is cut short when Joaquin crashes a motorcycle and injures an arm. This past spring, Phoenix and a pal buy snazzy Ducati cycles on a whim (they find the name in the Yellow Pages and like how it sounds), and he winds up with stitches in his forehead. Some might also say there is a metaphor here.

In the five years since Phoenix slithered to prominence as the hapless juvenile hit man in “To Die For,” he has impersonated a variety of troubled or volatile young men who fall under the category of Accidents Waiting to Happen. (Often in movies that were dead on arrival, such as “U-Turn,” “8MM” and “Clay Pigeons.”) And he has brought to all of these characters a bruised vulnerability that evokes such accident-prone icons of his parents’ youth, such as Montgomery Clift and James Dean.

At 26, Phoenix is poised to be released forever from the media purgatory that has trapped him since he made the 911 phone call that signaled his big brother River’s death in 1993. This past year, the Joaquin Phoenix formula has been revitalized in two smashing supporting performances, fueling speculation that he may have fulfilled his brother’s potential to become the best actor of his generation. In Ridley Scott’s “Gladiator,” he drew eyes away from Russell Crowe as the Machiavellian kid emperor Commodus. In James Gray’s operatic crime drama “The Yards,” he impressed as Willie Gutierrez, a subway administration functionary on the make. Phoenix exudes a heretofore unseen refinement in his first bona-fide star role, as an idealistic priest who attempts to reform Geoffrey Rush’s Marquis de Sade in Philip Kaufman’s juiced-up literary drama “Quills,” opening later this month.

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Joaquin Phoenix is sitting on the front terrace of his Tribeca neighborhood watering hole, Sosa Borella, ignoring the autumn chill with the help of a mint tea and pack of Marlboro Lights. Frequently, he mops the ashes off the table with the back of his hand, a nervous, theatrical gesture. He resolves to quit every now and then, but you know how it is. Firing up a cigarette, Phoenix rails against the tyranny of journalists and producers who have typed him as an eternal slacker-in-training. “Every film I do, I meet resistance going into it, and by the time it comes out, everyone says, ‘Well, you were the obvious choice.’ ”

“When I did ‘The Yards,’ James Gray offered me the part of Leo [Mark Wahlberg’s beleaguered lead character, a one-time car thief who is trying to toe the line after being released from prison]. I thought, ‘Nah, I wanted to play strong and seductive and proactive, not the guy who’s just out of prison.’ I had done that before. Miramax was opposed to me playing Willie. I don’t think they thought I could do it. He wouldn’t be charismatic or sexy enough, or whatever it is they thought they wanted. [When] I went for ‘Gladiator,’ you wouldn’t believe the resistance I met. It was a bit of a process getting that job.”

Phoenix smiles slyly, adding, “I gotta say, if somebody just comes to me and says, ‘You’re fantastic! I want you!’ I think I’d probably be scared and say, no, there must be something wrong with this picture. So I don’t mind a little opposition. It pushes you to work as hard as you can.”

Tension and resistance are so endemic to Phoenix’s modus operandi, according to “Quills” director Kaufman, that he tends to internalize them on the set. “There is a certain struggle he goes through before he can do a scene. He didn’t want to do the read-through that we have with all the other actors. He kept saying, ‘Phil, don’t make me do this, man, oh man!’ I said, ‘Joaquin, there are going to be 25 British actors at the table and you are going to sit there and do it.’ He was dragged kicking and screaming, and of course he ended up having a great time.

“It’s almost like the fear of flying that people have. When they get to the other side of the continent, they feel great. But that anxiety overtakes him. That’s part of his process and part of his way of getting there. Eventually, he may find ways of doing this that are a little more gentle on himself.”

As he discusses his roles, Phoenix is a smoking bundle of oppositions: jokey yet earnest, cocky and self-effacing, furtive one minute, forthcoming the next. His empathy for his often unsympathetic characters runs so deep, it is all he can do to keep tears from welling up when he relates their plight. It’s an emotional availability that borders on exhibitionism, which is exactly what comes across on-screen. “He was 19 when he ascended the throne,” he says of Commodus in “Gladiator,” a multifaceted performance that could have succumbed to easy villainy. “My God, I’m 26. This 19-year-old kid who grew up with tutors and his father away at war. It’s so sad. He was the equivalent of a young, rich spoiled kid from a dysfunctional family that has kind of inherited his father’s multinational corporation. I’m thinking, ‘I have to make an impact.’ But I also know the people won’t embrace me. He’s filled with shame, he’s humiliated and insecure, right off the bat. What’s it like for a 20-year-old insomniac emperor roaming around the palace?”

Phoenix also understood the potential for camp in the role. “It’s dangerous. It’s a period piece and a predominantly English cast. He could have turned into [he affects a mock-pompous British accent] ‘My, lord! You know, a Dom DeLuise emperor in ‘History of the World--Part 1.’ What I’ve always looked for in my characters was a certain complexity. I wanted his anger and tyranny to come out of his fear and powerlessness, instead of him just being this stoic, powerful young prince.”

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There is little in Phoenix’s own childhood that would have prepped him for the coddled emperor. The second son in a poor, but oddly functional brood of five (with sisters Rain, Summer and Liberty) that at one point crammed into a one-bedroom apartment, Phoenix was raised in an atmosphere remarkably free of sibling rivalry. “Once, me and Summer were up for this TV series and both got callbacks. Finally, she and the other kid got the part. My agent and mother were worried for me. And I just remember going, I think it’s [expletive] great that at least one of us is doing it.

“As much as there was a group in the family and a very strong bond of love, my parents treated us as individuals and never let us forget that. I think they are really extraordinary.”

Phoenix’s homage to his parents may come with some sensitivity to negative fallout from River’s drug overdose, as the media presented a portrait of an itinerant, Age of Aquarius-style upbringing. Joaquin Raphael Phoenix was born in Puerto Rico, where his parents served as missionaries in a cult group called Children of God. Venezuela was the next stop, and at age 3 Joaquin and family moved from there to a suburb of Orlando, Fla., where his father took a job as an estate groundskeeper. River was the first to catch the acting bug, inspired in part by a family tradition of at-home theatricals and story fests. When River landed a featured part in the 1982 TV series “Seven Brides for Seven Brothers,” the family followed him out to the West Coast. Joaquin and Summer reaped the benefit with small roles on the show. By the time he was 8, Joaquin was doing commercials, albeit very selectively. “We were vegans, so we didn’t do commercials for anything that used animal products. We didn’t want to do anything for Coca-Cola or any kind of big corporations. My agent was like, ‘Are you [expletive] kidding? You’ve cut out 75% of all commercials. You’re not doing McDonald’s. You’re not doing milk. What are you [expletive] doing?’ ”

Following a noteworthy stint as Dianne Wiest’s troubled son in “Parenthood” (1989), a restless Joaquin Phoenix retired from the business at 15 to accompany his dad for a summer of “father-son bonding-hanging out kind of thing” in Mexico, where they looked to buy rain forest land with an eye toward preservation. When they weren’t digging their motor home out of the mud in the middle of nowhere, Joaquin was learning how to cycle, a diversion that brought his sabbatical to a premature halt.

When it is suggested to the actor that he has a dysfunctional relationship with fast-moving vehicles, he smiles and says, “Yeah, you’re right. You know, my problem is not when I’m actually going. I’m really good at driving fast and going ‘round curves. It’s when I’m at a standstill when the problem starts. That’s when I fall off my motorcycle. Because I don’t stop.”

After three scrapes and an intimate brush with his brother’s mortality, Phoenix must be getting the message about life in the fast lane. Before departing to Germany last week to film a military satire called “Buffalo Soldiers,” he left his Ducati to his cousin.