Joker star Joaquin Phoenix has won the best actor Oscar at the 92nd Academy Awards, for his performance as Batman’s nemesis. Phoenix was the overwhelming favourite, seeing off competition from the likes of Marriage Story’s Adam Driver and Once Upon a Time in Hollywood’s Leonardo DiCaprio.
Joker, directed by Todd Phillips, is an origin story for the celebrated supervillain, previously played most famously on screen by Jack Nicholson and Heath Ledger. Phoenix’s version is an aspiring standup comic who has a disorder that causes him to burst into uncontrollable laughter at inappropriate moments, and who is obsessed with a talkshow host played by Robert De Niro.
Phoenix has made a virtual clean sweep of major awards for the role, winning best actor at the Baftas, the Critics’ Choice and Screen Actors Guild awards, and best actor in a drama at the Golden Globes. He had previously received two best actor nominations at the Oscars for Walk the Line in 2006 and The Master in 2013, but this is his first win.
In a lengthy acceptance speech, Phoenix made an impassioned plea for human beings to stop fighting each other and to stop plundering our natural resources, placing particular emphasis on the cruelty involved in industrial dairy farming.
He closed his emotional address by quoting a lyric written, aged 17, by his late brother, River: “Run to the rescue with love and peace will follow.”
