Joaquin Phoenix Turns To Music

10/30/08 1:07pm

by Kate Harper (CHARTattack)

Actor Joaquin Phoenix has announced he's retiring from Hollywood to pursue a career in music.

The 34-year-old Phoenix has starred in such films as Gladiator, Hotel Rwanda and Walk The Line, which garnered him a best actor Oscar nomination for his portrayal of Johnny Cash (who occasionally moonlighted as an actor) and a Grammy Award for his work on the soundtrack. He has also directed music videos for People In Planes, Silversun Pickups and Albert Hammond, Jr.

"I want to take this opportunity... also to give you the exclusive and just talk a little bit about the fact that this will be my last performance as an actor... I'm not doing films anymore," he said on television's Extra during an interview about his latest film, Two Lovers, which also stars Gwyneth Paltrow.

"I'm not doing films anymore... I'm working on my music," he said when asked why he was retiring from the film industry. "I'm done. I've been through that."

Earlier this year, Charlatans frontman Tim Burgess told NME.com that he and Phoenix had begun working with him and Spacehog's Antony Langdon on songs that Phoenix had written. The three had been recording in a Los Angeles studio with Charlatans manager Alan McGee, who, funnily enough, announced this week that he was retiring from the management business. Maybe some of that rubbed off on Phoenix.

There's no word when or if this collaboration will be released. We've heard this "I'm retiring" business far too often from everyone from Jay-Z to M.I.A. to Stompin' Tom Connors in the music industry (let alone Hollywood), and it's almost always come to naught. So we're willing to bet that once Phoenix figures out that actors-turned-musicians don't do so well in terms of commercial success, he'll make a Hollywood comeback.

This also makes us wonder if, unlike every other actor-turned-musician (with the exceptions of Leonard Nimoy and William Shatner), Phoenix will actually manage to record and release genuinely good music.

But right now, we can't really get the general, overall terribleness of the microphone stand-throwing Jared Leto out of our heads when we think of actors-turned-musicians. Nor can we remove horrible thoughts of albums by Minnie Driver, Russell Crowe, Keanu Reeves, Jennifer Love Hewitt, Kevin Bacon, Lindsay Lohan, Scarlett Johansson or any other film star from our brains.

Here's Phoenix's announcement on Extra: