Joaquin Phoenix

“I've always loved music, but I never really played anything. After 'Walk the Line' and learning to play guitar, and having that sense of performing, I think that certainly opened the door fo...”

“My parents were just searching for an alternative way of raising their children.”

“It's an amazing feeling to go into a studio and really be alone.”

“If you walk into a room and one hundred people say, 'You are a lovely, beautiful person', who isn't going to be affected by that? But you have to tell yourself not to value that. You have to...”

“You can take that 'I'm an artiste' stuff to the wrong extreme, too.”

“I would try and sing along with bands that I like but it sounded so atrocious that I couldn't.”

“I enjoy humour more than anything, I don't really sit around banging my head and crying all the time.”

“There are kids who get on a BMX bike when they're eight years old and they go, 'Whoa, this is incredible,' and grow up to do extreme sports. It's the same for me with acting.”

“I don't really make movies because I want to see my face on a billboard or because I want to get good reviews or have a big box office. That doesn't really matter to me at all.”

“I didn't know much about him, and I wasn't a big country music fan. I listened to the Beatles and David Bowie, so I didn't know a lot about him.”

“I had a really wonderful upbringing. We were a tight family. It was wonderful to grow up with so many siblings. We were all just a year or two apart, and we were always so supportive of each...”

“For me, I guess I'm the acting equivalent of somebody that jumps off buildings and parachutes.”

“I just I don't feel challenged by acting anymore. I don't enjoy the process anymore.”

“I'd see child actors and I'd get so jealous, because they're just completely wide open.”

“When I look back I can't believe how my parents managed, but the cliche is true. We didn't have money, but we were rich in so many other ways.”

“I still think that movies are amazing; I respect actors and directors.”

“I have this horrible sense of humor where I think discomfort is funny - partly because I experience discomfort a lot, and it's a way of laughing at it and getting a release.”

“My significant other right now is myself, which is what happens when you suffer from multiple personality disorder and self-obsession.”

“Things are rarely as exciting or dramatic as we make them out to be in the press.”

“You see so many earnest characters in movies all the time, everyone has a purpose.”