Joaquin Phoenix on River, Rooney, and Rosebud

“I didn’t imagine that it would be smooth sailing,”Joaquin Phoenix says of the weeks of discussion and controversy that have led up to the release of his new film, Joker. “It’s a difficult film. In some ways, it’s good that people are having a strong reaction to it.” In his new Vanity Faircover story, Phoenix talks to Joe Hagan about his unusual and peripatetic childhood, the impact of his brother River’s death in 1993, and how he went from assuming his Her costar Rooney Mara hated him to becoming her fiancé. (Hint: It involved some googling.) He borrows the metaphor of Rosebud from Citizen Kane to say that, while his brother’s death is one of the central things he’s working through with his acting, “It’s one, it’s one of the Rosebuds, but it’s not a Rosebud in the way that people think. At all.”
Elsewhere in HWD, Paul Chi talks to Angelina Jolie at the red-carpet premiere of Maleficent: Mistress of Evil; Anthony Breznican gets a look at Michael Bay’s big-budget arrival on Netflix; and Laura Bradley catches up with the recent revelation that there’s at least one happy same-sex couple in the Star Wars galaxy.