Joaquin Phoenix, the actor known for playing the Joker in Todd Phillips's film of the same name, has been named Peta's person of the year 2019 by the animal rights organisation.
"I don't want to cause pain to another living being. I don't want to take their young away from them, or force them to spend their lives locked up, fattened, only to be slaughtered. It's an absurd and barbaric thing, and I don't understand how anyone can bear it. Surely the impact it has on the environment is devastating too."
These are the words of Joaquin Phoenix, the American actor known for his performances in films such as Gladiator, The Master and Walk the Line, as well as for playing Todd Phillips's Joker.
Phoenix has just been named person of the year by Peta (People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals), one of the most important non-profit organisations for the protection of animal rights. The actor earned this recognition because he "has used his fame to draw attention to animals in need, has contributed to the creation of films, billboards and videos to raise public awareness, and has protested forcefully against cruelty towards other living beings."
Joaquin Phoenix has in fact been vegan since the age of three, when, together with his siblings, he witnessed the gutting of a freshly caught fish. He has dedicated his life to fighting speciesism — that is, the attribution of greater value to human beings than to other animal species. Around the time of the Joker premiere in Los Angeles, a giant image of Phoenix alongside a rooster appeared on sunny Sunset Boulevard and on the skyscrapers of Times Square in New York, bearing the words: "We are all animals." This came less than two months before Thanksgiving, the holiday observed in the United States during which more than 40 million turkeys are consumed.
When we look at the world through the eyes of another animal, we realise that inside we are all the same — and that we all deserve to live free from suffering.Joaquin Phoenix, actor and activist
And that was not the only advertisement made with Peta. Phoenix also agreed to spend an entire day among a flock of sheep to discourage the use of wool clothing, narrated a documentary about the killing of dogs for the leather industry, and even recorded a video in which he held his breath underwater in a swimming pool to demonstrate the suffering that fish are forced to endure when they are caught. With another organisation — the Los Angeles Animal Save — he went to a slaughterhouse to give pigs about to be killed some water and a little love, something they had probably never received.
Also due out very shortly — on 10 December in American cinemas — is the documentary The Animal People which, thanks in part to Phoenix as its producer, will finally tell the story of six activists who, around ten years ago, exposed the cruelties committed by Huntingdon Life Sciences, a private institution that carries out animal testing on behalf of various pharmaceutical and cosmetics companies, only to find themselves accused of terrorism on the grounds that their website, according to the prosecution's lawyers, "incited people to violence."
In short, Phoenix has never missed an opportunity to give a voice not only to animals, who have none, but also to those who put their own lives at risk to defend them. His partner, actress Rooney Mara, fights by his side. Without doubt one of Hollywood's most admirable couples, then.
