Actor Joaquin Phoenix has recently revealed he was ‘full of fear’ when he made his lengthy pro-animal rights speech after winning the Oscar for Best Actor for his performance in Joker at the 2020 Academy Awards.
The Hollywood actor said he ‘wasn’t excited’ about the prospect of giving an acceptance speech after winning the Oscar for Best Actor for his performance as Arthur Fleck in the film Joker.
Phoenix, who is notorious for his environmental activism and is an outspoken advocate for veganism, used his speech time to make an impassioned plea for animal rights, which shocked audiences worldwide.
Phoenix said, “I did not want to get up anywhere and do anything. I was not excited about the opportunity,’ he said, reflecting on the moment”.
Phoenix’s Oscar speech had less to do with “Joker” and more to do with fighting for animal rights, which is the main reason his speech went viral on social media.
People started calling me and saying, ‘Did you write his speech? Because what he says is exactly what you’re saying to us every day before shooting,’” Kossakovsky told The Times about Phoenix’s Oscar speech. “So we decided, ‘OK, we have to show him the film”.
His declarations drew criticism from the British National Farmers’ Union (NFU) president, Minette Batters, who said celebrity campaigners for veganism did ‘enormous damage’ to the UK’s meat producers and their wellbeing.
She said farmers feared a loss of livelihood and family holdings due to Phoenix’s speech.
But no one wanted to think too much about a possible cause of the weirdness: the sheer frustration with our refusal to recognize the suffering. That being said the amount of melodrama surrounding this is certainly beyond the understanding as there’s no such thing called regulated freedom of speech.