By Christy Lemire
The Associated Press

Joaquin Phoenix won't read this article.

He can't stand reading about himself, and he can't stand the fact that other actors do it. So he won't know of the heartfelt praise his co-stars in The Village have for him.

From Sigourney Weaver, who plays his mother: "He's a very caring person with a lot of integrity, very sensitive. ... He reminds me a little bit of Bill Hurt in a way because Bill cares very much about things."

From Bryce Dallas Howard, who plays the woman who loves him: "He's acting on a different plane. He's almost superhuman."

And from M. Night Shyamalan, who directed Phoenix in The Village and Signs: "I think he's going to have a Sean Penn-like career."

Won't watch himself

Phoenix won't see any of that in himself, though - and he probably won't see The Village, which opened Friday and in which he plays a quiet young man who wants to venture into the woods where frightening forces lurk in late 19th-century Pennsylvania. Something else he can't stand is watching himself on screen, despite having amassed an impressive filmography and an Academy Award nomination.

"It's not a satisfying feeling for me. I just always see things that I missed," the actor said. "But I think also, I just think that it breeds a self-consciousness that's not going to serve me in my work. There are so many actors that start out as really great actors and through the course of their career - eight years, six years - something starts changing, and I think it's just that they start watching themselves."

Phoenix, 29, dismisses as "pure luck" the fact that he's crafted a career filled with serious, meaty roles. He has worked with respected directors who are visual stylists but also have something to say, including Gus Van Sant in To Die For (1995), Oliver Stone in U-Turn (1997), Philip Kaufman in Quills (2000) and Ridley Scott in Gladiator, which earned him a supporting-actor Oscar nomination for playing the jealous, scheming Commodus. The film won five Oscars in 2001, including best picture.

"For me, honestly - and sorry to sound cliche - but it's just following your heart. I find that at the end of a film, I rarely know what I'm going to do next. I'm not one of those actors that has four movies lined up," Phoenix said. "I just suddenly have a feeling, something that I would like to try. I basically just go through the script until I find something that is closest to that feeling that I want to explore, and I've just been really fortunate in the scripts that have come my way when they have."

Phoenix was shooting Gladiator when Quills came to him, for example. Shyamalan saw him in that film, in which he played a priest battling his own lustful urges, and cast him in Signs as a former minor league baseball player who's living with his widower brother (Mel Gibson) when mysterious crop circles appear.

'Kind of the hero'

"Signs was kind of my attempt to bring him into that leading-man, good-guy role, make him the hero," Shyamalan said. "Because he's kind of intense and dark, people tend to cast him in mean roles or in the villain roles, and I really saw kind of the hero in him."

In person, Phoenix is soft-spoken yet articulate, though he clearly doesn't enjoy talking about himself. (Weaver had suggested as much beforehand: "I'm actually surprised that he's doing an interview because he's not the most gregarious person in the world.")

He fidgets his way through the interview, he rolls and unrolls the sleeves of his black button-down shirt, runs his fingers through his dark, wavy hair and looks away for long stretches while answering questions.

He shows unexpected flashes of humor with a quick, biting wit. And as a lifelong vegan, he gets passionate about subjects like body image in Hollywood.

"I'm so sick and (expletive) tired of every single actor with their six pack and how it's just a standard. You just don't see people in movies without sculpted bodies with their shirts off unless they're meant to be some heavyweight redneck, and then they go the other extreme. It's bothersome because I just don't think it really reflects real people," he said.

The Phoenix family moved around quite a bit, but Joaquin spent much of his childhood in Southern California's San Fernando Valley. These days, no place is really home - sometimes he stays in New York, but he's currently filming Walk the Line, in which he stars as Johnny Cash, in Memphis.

"I can't sing but I am singing," he said. "The idea is to not make a movie about the icon but to make it about a man. ... I have to think about him as just a man or else it would be overwhelming. It would be too much pressure."