Phoenix says that his worst concerns about singing were eased by the director, James Mangold. "He told me early on, 'Listen, if people want to hear Johnny Cash, they can go out and buy records. If they want to see Johnny Cash, they can go out and buy the movies. We are telling the story of a man."' right. very right.

He hates talking about acting. He refuses to talk about his family. Most of all, he hates being asked about the death of his brother, actor River Phoenix, in 1993, when Joaquin was 18. He blames the media for intruding into his and his family's grief, intensifying their distress. His anguished call to the emergency services, as River died in his arms of a drug overdose on the pavement outside a Los Angeles nightclub, was endlessly replayed on television and radio.

"There's this public perception of me carrying around this loss of my brother that I think is not fair," he counters. "To be honest, I've come to terms with it. I think there is a vast difference between losing someone when you're seven years old and when you're 18, in your conception of death. John, as he talked about it, did carry a lot of guilt and a lot of pain for his entire life over the loss of his brother Jack, but that is not my experience."

Cash also had a long battle with addiction, portrayed with great conviction by Phoenix. Shortly after he finished shooting Walk the Line early last year, Phoenix went into rehab for alcohol abuse.

Phoenix had a strange upbringing. His parents were hippie nomads - Joaquin remains a vegan and doesn't wear leather - who wandered with their children across Central and South America; and they were members for many years of a religious cult called the Children of God, which notoriously encouraged sex between adults and children. I think of his role w/ Nicole Kidman ~To Die For.

The family, including siblings River, Rain, Joaquin (who then called himself Leaf) ah I remember hearing of "Leaf" Phoenix I think), Liberty and Summer, moved back to California when the children were still small. Their mother, Heart, got a job as an assistant to the head of casting at the US television network NBC, which is how Joaquin and most of his brothers and sisters started acting. Even then, the whole family had to live in a cheap one-bedroom apartment in San Fernando Valley.

Phoenix watched dozens of hours of video tapes of Cash, yet he says his performance was most informed by the fact that, three years before he even knew he was going to be playing the singer, he had dinner with Johnny and June at their home. He saw at first hand the complex, intertwined, lifelong relationship between the Man in Black, the wife he adored, their music and his guitar, which Phoenix had to learn how to play, and to handle, like Cash.
During Phoenix's visit, Cash and his wife sang I Stood on the Banks of Jordan for him. "They're looking in each other's eyes as they're singing," he recalls. "This was two people who absolutely were connected, and their love for each other and their love for music was completely apparent."

Phoenix doesn't like discussing how he prepares for any of his roles, but he does want people to know that he did not draw on his own life - and especially not on his feelings about his brother's death - to find a way of playing Cash.
"As much as this film means to me, and as much as John's life is important and something I want to do justice to, and as much as I have great respect for him and his family, I have more respect for my family, for my personal life, than ever to exploit my personal experience for a movie."

All you need is Cash - NEWS.com.au - Jan 17, 2006
good article. maybe they do journalism better in australia.