Phoenix Sets Out on 'Internal Exploration' With Music

Feb. 14, 2009 — -- The rap on Joaquin Phoenix?

The two-time Oscar nominee says his career change, from acting to music, is absolutely for real. Phoenix, a self-described "life poet," has been in his recording studio in Los Angeles, rapping about his world.

"I want it to be big. Not big like popular. I want it to really try and be, for me, the culmination of my life thus far," says Phoenix of his hip-hop debut, which is a work in progress. "I realize it's going to be for public consumption, so there are songs that are about — there are dance songs. Most of it, I think, is an internal exploration."

With his shaggy hair, disheveled attire and bushy beard, Phoenix, 34, marches to the beat of his own drummer. He's twitchy and not much of a talker, giving mostly brief, stilted answers. And during a subsequent photo shoot, he suddenly gets up and walks over to an artificial plant, rubbing his face in it.

And then there's his jumbled, hostile appearance Wednesday night on "The Late Show With David Letterman," during which Phoenix stuck a piece of chewed gum to Letterman's desk after a series of one-word answers. It's yet another development in the weird world of Phoenix, an idiosyncratic, intense actor who announced last fall that he was leaving his day job to pursue a music career. And this week, he was in New York to promote what he says is his final film, the drama "Two Lovers."

What, exactly, is going on with the actor? Not even his Two Lovers director, James Gray, who also worked with him on "We Own the Night" and "The Yards," can say for certain.

"People have asked me that this week, and all I can say is, you guys know as much as I do," Gray says. "He gives everything to the part. You have to call him the character name. He lives it. At the end of the shoot, he told me he was tired and didn't know if he could do this anymore.

"About two months after the movie was finished, my wife called me into the kitchen and showed me on the computer Joaquin looking like Rasputin saying he's quitting. I couldn't reach him. I went to his house and hopped the fence. He's built a recording studio in his house. He told me: 'I'm doing my own thing. I'm quitting.' "