what they say about him

He goes to extreme emotional places. He can look like a scared, vulnerable child. Also like the guy in the pool room you don`t want to mess with.

He`s got Elvis dust, magic and charisma that you can`t intellectualize or deconstruct. You just turn on the camera and watch hin run. That`s what makes it so beautiful.

When I hang out with Joaquin, I feel like I'm twelve years old in the suburbs, and we're going to shoot our BB guns at streetlights.

I'm in love with Joaquin. And it's the first time I'm actually in love.

We were so in love," said Liv about their first meeting. "We were together every second, and we were the best of friends and in each other`s trailers. Nobody knew - that`s the amazing part.

I would love to work with him again. He is so, so, so talented. We need to find the right project, something really different. I want him to direct me. He has so many beautiful ideas. He`ll just stare off, and he`s not there, and then he`ll tell me a story that is just - he has such an amazing imagination.

I fell in love with him the second I saw him. I had the part already and they were trying to find someone to play his part. Pat (O'Connor) called me in to read with him. I walked into the room. He had his back to me. He looked at me and I just went, 'Wheeeew.' I had this grin on my face that was so silly. I couldn't get it to go away, one of those grins that actually hurts. I couldn't make a straight face. I had to leave the room. I just loved him. We talked all day.

To me it seems he is so clearly the best, most talented young actor of my generation. He's such a genius in To Die For.
That scene where he's dancing with Nicole Kidman...................
Oh, I know!! He got his little tatoo on his arm [laughts] and he's just being that kid. He's not "acting". That's rare. Still, there's four or five people who get offered movies before him. It just doesn't make sense. I can't understand it. I try to tell people that I know who are making movies, "Listen, get in now on this dude." He's about to have four movies come out, and after that, he'll just blow up. He'll get the respect he deserves.

According to Joaquin Phoenix, this guy is 'going to come out in five years having writen, directed, produced, and starred in his own movie.' someone who's going to make everyone smake their heads and say, 'Oh, God, we really slipped on him.

I've been on planes with him, and I don't really want to look at him, either, because he sits down and drinks sixteen shots of whatever he can find and pulls his shirt over his head and stays like that for the rest of the flight.

With Joaq, people kind of want to take care of him, because they see that he's still pure. It's like when someone has an 8-month old child in their arms and everyone in the room kind of smiles and looks at it and wants to protect it and love it, because they're all thinking, Oh God, I hope the world doesn't get to him. I hope for Joaq, more than anyone else, that he doesn't become cynical and hardened by the nastiness of the business. And he probably won't, but it's a fight. It's hard for him, I can tell.

Women fall at his feet just about everywhere he goes. He pays so little attention, I don't know if he recognizes it or not. He just kind of blazes a trail and leaves all these blushing women in his wake.

I think that getting together with me to work on the film was difficult at first because I automatically reminded him of River. He understandably doesn't like to be reminded of him. He'll still usually say "my brother" instead of "River", and rarely brings him up. He likes to hear stories about him, though, and listens when I talk about what he used to do and say. I never ask questions about him. It's just something you don't bring up.

Joaq was always worried he wasn't doing his best. He's a great actor, but he was always trashing himself. It was the opposite of River. River would know when he did a scene well. If someone suggested that maybe he should have tried another approach, he'd debate it and say, "No, no, it was really good.' You'd never say that to Joaquin or it would send him into a tailspin of self-criticism. In the end, both ended up doing good work, only one was confident, the other's not.

I don`t spend as much time making my movies as he does on his characters.

Joaquin understands the danger of this business. I`ve worked with several young actors I have worried about, and I`m not worried aobut him at all. I knew River, who was also talented, just very different, and I´ve often wondered if having an older brother gave Joaquin perspective - it`s just a guess.

The reason that Return to Paradise works on some level is because you care about getting this boy out.

It`s an understatement to say, `He gets into a part,``because Joaquin always goes full throttle. It`s wild to see how he changes. One day he looks really `college,` two weeks later he has blue hair.

He´s also my cool gauge. So if he thinks something`s cool, then I feel good about it.

We're very close. I can even say it's my mentor. I find he's a fascinating actor. In Gladiators, he makes you understand in a very subtle way how his character became so evil.

We're each other's best friends, says Summer, who refers to her brother as this big ball of GIVE! No matter where we go or who we meet, tofu salad is always home.

I just pray for him. After you've been burned, you grow a harder shell, and I don't think Joaq is capable of growing a harder shell. He's not someone who can say, 'OK, I'm going to be a dick to you because you were a dick to me.' He just stays true to himself in every way he can.

Joaquin has a completely different viewpoint on the world, and that made for some very, very funny conversations. He's a cracker, mate. I love him. Joaquin needs to have somebody spend some time with him so that he can relax about the things he's doing. It amazes me that he has no recognition whatsoever of just how f***ing good he is. He can do a scene and bust you apart and then he'll say, "I've gotta do it again, that was terrible." And then he does it again and it's even better.

I'd seen Joaquin in a picture that I'd produced called "Clay Pigeons" and thought he had an interesting face. Then I was shocked by what he pulled off in "Return to Paradise" - I thought that was as good as it gets. That did it for me. I had a feeling in my bones about him, an intuition, and I couldn't shake it, so I had no other really serious contenders for our prince of darkness.

When I met with him for Gladiator, I think his first reaction was absolute horror. He said, 'You want me to do a toga-and-sandal movie? You've got to be out of your f---ing mind!' And he actually suggested we test him, which is very smart because he needed to find out if he could do it too.

Whatever happens to Joaquin on film, I always feel sorry for him. He's kind of a wounded individual.

Joaquin doesn't believe he's good and you have to tell him how f---ing marvelous he is. He says, 'I'm hopeless, they all think I'm as good as River, I shouldn't be in this picture, I should be selling cars, I'm not an actor at all.

He had a cigarette dangling out of his mouth and he had on these really intense aviator shades and his hair was all tousled , and he was like, 'Hey, dude,' Then he walked onto the soundstage, and the zigarette gets stamped out and the glasses come off and someone runs a comb through his hair, and the guy is suddenly an early-nineteenth-century priest. It was the most transformative moment-it took my breath away. Joaquin is someone who could slide by you in the hallway, but aim a lens at him and he becomes thirty feet tall. Joaquin is genuine, with access to absolutely volcanic emotional places in his soul.

I had a great time with him, and he's a hell of an actor. Joaquin has unbelievably, tour de force natural skills. But the question is, how do you get it from him? It's a brutal procces.

Joaquin is willing to put himself into the most troubling and personal and exposing of places, which is all you can ask from an actor. Frankly, it's very difficult for me to work with him-I'm not comfortable with torture. But I will work with him in a second, because he`s that good.