It’s fair to say that Joaquin Phoenix has found a creative soul mate in director James Gray. We Own The Night is their second collaboration together following the critically acclaimed The Yards - and they have already embarked on a third.'The main reason I wanted to do We Own The Night was the chance to work with James again,' says Phoenix. 'It’s the sense that you are going to go in and try to discover things in a different way than you might with other directors. 'It’s what he’s interested in, what he values and he pushes you hard because he pushes himself in the same way. I cannot say how easy it is for a director to go ‘cut, print’ and walk off. James never does that. He always wants something more.'Set in the 1980s, We Own The Night is the story of two brothers, Bobby, played by Phoenix, and Joseph (Mark Wahlberg) who end up on different sides of the law. Joseph has followed in his father’s footsteps and joined the New York police force and Bobby is the rebel who runs a hip nightclub awash with drugs and gangsters. Eva Mendes plays Bobby’s sexy girlfriend, Amada.When Bobby’s father (Robert Duvall) asks him to help trap a Russian gangster who uses his club, at first he refuses but when his bother is shot, he finally has to decide which side he is on.

'It’s about destiny and fate, sure,' says Phoenix. 'But I interpret it as an incredibly tragic story. It’s not about a guy who has turned his life around and is doing the honourable thing, this is a dude who has unlocked a level of hate that he had never experienced before and it will change him forever.'

Phoenix is an actor prepared to go to exceptional lengths in a role. In We Own The Night he made himself physically sick for a scene where his character, Bobby, watches helplessly as his father is shot.

It’s an extreme reaction and most actors wouldn’t feel the need to go that far, but Phoenix put the idea up to his director and argued that it made perfect sense.

'On the day we were shooting that scene we still hadn’t decided how I was going to react,' explains Phoenix. 'And that’s exciting because most directors are going to be so insecure about their film and go ‘I want the actor to bellow to the heavens and cry because I need the audience to know that this is an emotional moment.’

'But not James. For him to go ‘yeah, I’ll let my actor run up and vomit’ is really ballsy and unique and interesting and that’s the kind of stuff he does. And that’s why I like working with him so much.

'How do you make yourself sick? You take a lot of cereal, you drink a lot of milk and you pound down two waters in a row and you jump up and down and you put your hand down your throat and you wiggle it all around until you vomit. That’s how.'

Phoenix is one of the coolest A list stars out there thanks, most recently, to his mesmerising Oscar nominated performance as Johnny Cash in Walk The Line which followed a succession of acclaimed films including Gladiator, Quills, The Yards, Buffalo Soldiers, It’s All About Love and Signs.

And yet, considering his status, he keeps a relatively low profile. And that’s exactly the way he likes it, preferring to keep his private life exactly that. 'I mean, like who wants to know? Do you really want to know? What you think is probably better and makes me sound cooler than what the reality is so just write whatever you think, because that’s better.

'I’m a huge Beatles fan, and I started reading this book about them and I got two pages in and it started to ruin it for me because I want to believe what I want to believe, I don’t really want to know the reality.

'Like part of what I love about art and I’m sorry if that sounds pretentious is that it’s subjective and that it’s about interpretation and that it’s about more than one way of seeing things.'

He was born the middle of five children in San Juan, Puerto Rico where his parents, Aryin and John, were working as Christian missionaries. The family settled in the Los Angeles area when Joaquin was six where, within a few years, he followed his older brother, River, into acting.

'Initially, it wasn’t a conscious effort to start acting,' he says. 'My brother had been working on a TV series in northern California (Seven Brides for Seven Brothers) and there were guest starring spots and my sisters and me got the roles. So I kind of fell into it, really.'

He is currently working on Two Lovers, directed by James Gray, and co starring with Gwyneth Paltrow.

You worked with Mark Wahlberg in The Yards and you’re back together in We Own The Night. Have you become friends?

The thing with actors being friends with actors is that you usually you actually don’t see each other at all. But I don’t know what it is about the three of us, James (Gray), Mark and myself but we get together and it’s just like three brothers getting together. And we all have such different lives and upbringings but for some reason there is some connection and I’m not really sure what that is.

Mark is a really easy person to love, he’s just a really nice, straight forward, unpretentious guy and I admire him greatly as an actor and in fact he infuriates me somewhat at how good he is and how effortless it seems (laughs).

Have you got an example?

I’ve been there when he’s had to take on five brand new lines that James threw at him and to see him turn around and just do it and it’s awesome. I’m not kidding you we have ten minutes to shoot the thing and the tension that builds up on set with like 50 people running around and there’s never enough time in a day, it gets really intense.

And we’re doing a scene where we’ve shot like seven takes and James comes in and goes ‘Mark, after Bobby says this I want you to turnaround and say’ and he gives him three lines and then walks in the room and goes ‘action.’ And Mark was just amazing.

The movie is about family. What does your family mean to you?

I know what it means to me. I don’t need to share it with you, but thank you for caring about me (laughs).

Are you interested in more human stories rather than, say, big action blockbusters?

Absolutely. I wouldn’t have done Gladiator if I didn’t believe that it had some core human emotion. If I’d finished school I probably would have been a psychologist or something. I’m really fascinated by human behaviour, I’m interested in our minds and what we think and what effects us and so I guess that for someone that is uneducated, acting is the best thing because that’s all it really is, you are analysing human behaviour and breaking that down. And I find that stimulating to explore those things.

Life must have changed so much for you since Gladiator..

It has but it’s the kind of thing where if you lose weight and somebody hasn’t seen you for a month they see you and it’s ‘oh my God! You look so different, you’ve changed so much!’ but to you it’s like ‘oh I didn’t notice, I feel a little looser in the pants.’ So in some ways it’s been a gradual road for me and it has been even compared to many actors.

Look at people like Heath Ledger and Colin Farrell. Colin Farrell came off his first movie and he was like a major movie star getting paid tons of money and doing a lot of movies and he’s wonderful, good for him, but that wasn’t my experience and part of that has been design and part of it is a reluctance to go down that road because I didn’t really want that exposure.

And part of it is to do with the type of films you make. It’s very rare that I’m in a movie that is going to be successful in some ways just because of the subject matter.

So I never had one of those ‘oh my god my life has changed so much’ weird over night things where you go from living in a car to living in a mansion, you know?

It’s always been a really gradual thing, which is how I want it to be. So there have been great changes and for me the biggest thing is the opportunities I’ve had and the opportunities are a direct result of the previous work and how it’s received.

You said earlier that you liked working with James Gray so much because he challenges you. Could you explain a little more about what you look for when you join a film?

Well, It’s like it’s 6 in the morning and you get in a car and go to the set and they are putting make up on you, you sit in the chair, people looking at you and they have expectations and for me, you know, it’s taxing and so I’m only going to wake up if I think that potentially at the end of the scene there is going to be something that affects me in a way.

There are times when you walk off a set and you feel like you could lift a truck because you feel so alive. If you ask a professional basketball player they would say that they want to be playing in the finals with two minutes left on the clock, they don’t want to be playing the first game of the season where you are 40 points ahead and dribble down and shoot a basket, it’s like you’ve already won.

You want to go like ‘it’s against me, it’s going to be a disaster!’ That’s exciting to me; the other thing is just not exciting.

Do you manage to live a normal life in between films?

Well normal life is subjective. And a normal life for me. being an actor, being 32, being paid a lot is going to be very different from another 32 year old’s normal life. But compared to other people in the business, I do live a normal life.

But there’s nothing specific I can say that I do. I mean, honestly I like a full stop. I can’t get off set fast enough and away from it fast enough. Basically I leave (the set) and I don’t talk to anybody, I don’t talk to anybody in the business at all, I don’t talk to my agent, anybody for a couple of weeks. I’m not being evasive at all.

I really don’t know what I do and I really don’t do anything. It sounds so awful and boring. I hate the beach and I don’t like travelling. I don’t like the things that most people would like. Like they go ‘for me to unwind I go to a spa or I go to the beach.’ I don’t do those things.

It sounds either like I’m being evasive or I have the most miserable existence on the planet and I don’t know that it’s like either of those options (laughs).

You play a nightclub manager in We Own The Night. Did you know that nightclub scene?

I lived in New York for a while when I was in my 20s and I went to some clubs and I did that a little bit but never very much, I was never very much into the club scene. And then we went to New York (to film) and Eva and were prepping and I said ‘we got to go to some clubs’ and I was introduced via (director) Terry George to this club manager and I went to this club every night, all night for like two weeks and going to the back rooms and talking to them about what they did, so that was useful. And Eva knew some people who were involved in that 80s scene and that was helpful, too.

How has life changed since your Oscar nomination?

Not at all. I think those things affect you as much as you allow them to, it doesn’t really change your life. I think we have these ideas and I had them myself I always imagined that people went to the Golden Globes and the Oscars and people kind of party for four days and they held that thing and touched it! (laughs) And the truth is you go home and you take off your suit and everything is exactly the same.

What music are you into?

I listened to Johnny Cash and nothing else for a year, I need a break. I’m not listening to much at the moment, just the same things since I was a kid, the Beatles and David Bowie.

Do you have a shared approach with James Gray?

In regards to film I think that we both value the spaces in between words, we value a gesture between people, and we value the things that aren’t typically valued in film because you develop such shorthand with film.

I guess because we’ve seen so many movies, right, it’s just goes like ‘oh alright that’s that scene, they argue, second act, let’s go’ and for James it’s about finding something else, finding something that’s less obvious and I really like that and I value that so when you read a scene and interpret a scene your first reaction, your instinct might be the obvious choice and then you can stop and go ‘ok, how else might we be able to convey this in a way that might be true to the character that feels new to us in some way?’

And is exciting and isn’t just ‘oh I’m doing the scene.’ because it’s easy to just do the ‘angry scene’ like just yell.

He’s always looking for things and I hope I am, too. It’s kind of what I know and what I value and enjoy are moments with people like James Gray sitting on set when I feel we are truly exploring something and that’s what gets me off.

They are few and far between but when you get that feeling it’s so powerful and so good that you will go back and risk doing two movies when you don’t get that feeling just for that brief moment. ends.

We Own the Night is released 28th AprilIt’s fair to say that Joaquin Phoenix has found a creative soul mate in director James Gray. We Own The Night is their second collaboration together following the critically acclaimed The Yards - and they have already embarked on a third.'The main reason I wanted to do We Own The Night was the chance to work with James again,' says Phoenix. 'It’s the sense that you are going to go in and try to discover things in a different way than you might with other directors. 'It’s what he’s interested in, what he values and he pushes you hard because he pushes himself in the same way. I cannot say how easy it is for a director to go ‘cut, print’ and walk off. James never does that. He always wants something more.'Set in the 1980s, We Own The Night is the story of two brothers, Bobby, played by Phoenix, and Joseph (Mark Wahlberg) who end up on different sides of the law. Joseph has followed in his father’s footsteps and joined the New York police force and Bobby is the rebel who runs a hip nightclub awash with drugs and gangsters. Eva Mendes plays Bobby’s sexy girlfriend, Amada.When Bobby’s father (Robert Duvall) asks him to help trap a Russian gangster who uses his club, at first he refuses but when his bother is shot, he finally has to decide which side he is on.

'It’s about destiny and fate, sure,' says Phoenix. 'But I interpret it as an incredibly tragic story. It’s not about a guy who has turned his life around and is doing the honourable thing, this is a dude who has unlocked a level of hate that he had never experienced before and it will change him forever.'

Phoenix is an actor prepared to go to exceptional lengths in a role. In We Own The Night he made himself physically sick for a scene where his character, Bobby, watches helplessly as his father is shot.

It’s an extreme reaction and most actors wouldn’t feel the need to go that far, but Phoenix put the idea up to his director and argued that it made perfect sense.

'On the day we were shooting that scene we still hadn’t decided how I was going to react,' explains Phoenix. 'And that’s exciting because most directors are going to be so insecure about their film and go ‘I want the actor to bellow to the heavens and cry because I need the audience to know that this is an emotional moment.’

'But not James. For him to go ‘yeah, I’ll let my actor run up and vomit’ is really ballsy and unique and interesting and that’s the kind of stuff he does. And that’s why I like working with him so much.

'How do you make yourself sick? You take a lot of cereal, you drink a lot of milk and you pound down two waters in a row and you jump up and down and you put your hand down your throat and you wiggle it all around until you vomit. That’s how.'

Phoenix is one of the coolest A list stars out there thanks, most recently, to his mesmerising Oscar nominated performance as Johnny Cash in Walk The Line which followed a succession of acclaimed films including Gladiator, Quills, The Yards, Buffalo Soldiers, It’s All About Love and Signs.

And yet, considering his status, he keeps a relatively low profile. And that’s exactly the way he likes it, preferring to keep his private life exactly that. 'I mean, like who wants to know? Do you really want to know? What you think is probably better and makes me sound cooler than what the reality is so just write whatever you think, because that’s better.

'I’m a huge Beatles fan, and I started reading this book about them and I got two pages in and it started to ruin it for me because I want to believe what I want to believe, I don’t really want to know the reality.

'Like part of what I love about art and I’m sorry if that sounds pretentious is that it’s subjective and that it’s about interpretation and that it’s about more than one way of seeing things.'

He was born the middle of five children in San Juan, Puerto Rico where his parents, Aryin and John, were working as Christian missionaries. The family settled in the Los Angeles area when Joaquin was six where, within a few years, he followed his older brother, River, into acting.

'Initially, it wasn’t a conscious effort to start acting,' he says. 'My brother had been working on a TV series in northern California (Seven Brides for Seven Brothers) and there were guest starring spots and my sisters and me got the roles. So I kind of fell into it, really.'

He is currently working on Two Lovers, directed by James Gray, and co starring with Gwyneth Paltrow.

You worked with Mark Wahlberg in The Yards and you’re back together in We Own The Night. Have you become friends?

The thing with actors being friends with actors is that you usually you actually don’t see each other at all. But I don’t know what it is about the three of us, James (Gray), Mark and myself but we get together and it’s just like three brothers getting together. And we all have such different lives and upbringings but for some reason there is some connection and I’m not really sure what that is.

Mark is a really easy person to love, he’s just a really nice, straight forward, unpretentious guy and I admire him greatly as an actor and in fact he infuriates me somewhat at how good he is and how effortless it seems (laughs).

Have you got an example?

I’ve been there when he’s had to take on five brand new lines that James threw at him and to see him turn around and just do it and it’s awesome. I’m not kidding you we have ten minutes to shoot the thing and the tension that builds up on set with like 50 people running around and there’s never enough time in a day, it gets really intense.

And we’re doing a scene where we’ve shot like seven takes and James comes in and goes ‘Mark, after Bobby says this I want you to turnaround and say’ and he gives him three lines and then walks in the room and goes ‘action.’ And Mark was just amazing.

The movie is about family. What does your family mean to you?

I know what it means to me. I don’t need to share it with you, but thank you for caring about me (laughs).

Are you interested in more human stories rather than, say, big action blockbusters?

Absolutely. I wouldn’t have done Gladiator if I didn’t believe that it had some core human emotion. If I’d finished school I probably would have been a psychologist or something. I’m really fascinated by human behaviour, I’m interested in our minds and what we think and what effects us and so I guess that for someone that is uneducated, acting is the best thing because that’s all it really is, you are analysing human behaviour and breaking that down. And I find that stimulating to explore those things.

Life must have changed so much for you since Gladiator..

It has but it’s the kind of thing where if you lose weight and somebody hasn’t seen you for a month they see you and it’s ‘oh my God! You look so different, you’ve changed so much!’ but to you it’s like ‘oh I didn’t notice, I feel a little looser in the pants.’ So in some ways it’s been a gradual road for me and it has been even compared to many actors.

Look at people like Heath Ledger and Colin Farrell. Colin Farrell came off his first movie and he was like a major movie star getting paid tons of money and doing a lot of movies and he’s wonderful, good for him, but that wasn’t my experience and part of that has been design and part of it is a reluctance to go down that road because I didn’t really want that exposure.

And part of it is to do with the type of films you make. It’s very rare that I’m in a movie that is going to be successful in some ways just because of the subject matter.

So I never had one of those ‘oh my god my life has changed so much’ weird over night things where you go from living in a car to living in a mansion, you know?

It’s always been a really gradual thing, which is how I want it to be. So there have been great changes and for me the biggest thing is the opportunities I’ve had and the opportunities are a direct result of the previous work and how it’s received.

You said earlier that you liked working with James Gray so much because he challenges you. Could you explain a little more about what you look for when you join a film?

Well, It’s like it’s 6 in the morning and you get in a car and go to the set and they are putting make up on you, you sit in the chair, people looking at you and they have expectations and for me, you know, it’s taxing and so I’m only going to wake up if I think that potentially at the end of the scene there is going to be something that affects me in a way.

There are times when you walk off a set and you feel like you could lift a truck because you feel so alive. If you ask a professional basketball player they would say that they want to be playing in the finals with two minutes left on the clock, they don’t want to be playing the first game of the season where you are 40 points ahead and dribble down and shoot a basket, it’s like you’ve already won.

You want to go like ‘it’s against me, it’s going to be a disaster!’ That’s exciting to me; the other thing is just not exciting.

Do you manage to live a normal life in between films?

Well normal life is subjective. And a normal life for me. being an actor, being 32, being paid a lot is going to be very different from another 32 year old’s normal life. But compared to other people in the business, I do live a normal life.

But there’s nothing specific I can say that I do. I mean, honestly I like a full stop. I can’t get off set fast enough and away from it fast enough. Basically I leave (the set) and I don’t talk to anybody, I don’t talk to anybody in the business at all, I don’t talk to my agent, anybody for a couple of weeks. I’m not being evasive at all.

I really don’t know what I do and I really don’t do anything. It sounds so awful and boring. I hate the beach and I don’t like travelling. I don’t like the things that most people would like. Like they go ‘for me to unwind I go to a spa or I go to the beach.’ I don’t do those things.

It sounds either like I’m being evasive or I have the most miserable existence on the planet and I don’t know that it’s like either of those options (laughs).

You play a nightclub manager in We Own The Night. Did you know that nightclub scene?

I lived in New York for a while when I was in my 20s and I went to some clubs and I did that a little bit but never very much, I was never very much into the club scene. And then we went to New York (to film) and Eva and were prepping and I said ‘we got to go to some clubs’ and I was introduced via (director) Terry George to this club manager and I went to this club every night, all night for like two weeks and going to the back rooms and talking to them about what they did, so that was useful. And Eva knew some people who were involved in that 80s scene and that was helpful, too.

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