The Village continues a run of major movies for Joaquin Pheonix and gives a big screen break to Bryce Dallas Howard. Steve Pratt reports.

ACTORS making war movies are used to being sent by the director to boot camp before filming begins. But the cast of The Village were subjected to a very different kind of training - they had to learn about rural life in the past with ploughing, butter-churning and candle-making among the lessons.

This latest thriller from Sixth Sense and Signs writer-director M Night Shyamalan tells of an isolated 19th century community who live in fear of creatures in the woods around their town. Joaquin Phoenix, who stars as intense villager Lucius Hunt, didn't regard boot camp as so much a learning experience as an opportunity for the cast to focus on the film - "to not have any other distractions and to get to know each other, really in character, and to develop our relationships in character".

The answer reflects 29-year-old Phoenix's serious attitude to acting and the whole business of being a Hollywood actor. He tends to shy away from the spotlight, saying that "if you're acting for outside validation, you're going to be destroyed".

He's seen the harm that success can lead to first hand, through the death of his older brother River Phoenix from a drugs overdose in 1993. He still struggles to cope with the loss. "I'll never understand why it happened," he says. "In the beginning I felt robbed of my memories because a public death is a really difficult thing to go through. People wanted to know things and you just feel so robbed."

He took a break from filming following his brother's death, returning to acting two years later opposite Nicole Kidman in the black comedy To Die For. His work since then has included Buffalo Soldiers and Gladiator, for which he earned an Oscar nomination as the evil emperor Commodus.

Shyamalan wrote the role of Lucius with Phoenix in mind, after working with him on Signs. That made the actor feel more pressure to do the role well.

"Night knows his characters so well. He has a full history for each character. You kind of get the sense that he could almost act the part better than you could," he says. "That can be intimidating. With all good directors you always have a feeling that you don't want to let them down. He puts such a great deal of work into his screenplays... you feel this overwhelming need to succeed."

He isn't much concerned with the box office success - or otherwise - of a movie he's in. "The only reason why I care if a movie succeeds or not is that it allows me to continue to work," he says. "A $100m movie gives you great opportunities. But for me personally it's just the process of making the film that I enjoy. In some ways I couldn't care less if someone sees it or doesn't."

Back at boot camp, while co-star Sigourney Weaver was having a great time learning to plough, Phoenix's contribution was making a broccoli pasta dish which no one ate. It was inedible, he admits.

"We did all that stuff - ploughing the field and scything, that's some work. No joke. Every muscle in your body hurts and that I didn't enjoy at all," he says.

"When I started a fire, I was there for 24 hours rubbing sticks together. Everyone else had gone to dinner. So, finally, I just got out my lighter and yelled, 'Fire'. For me, the whole process was just getting to know everybody more than anything. I remember seeing Sigourney out ploughing the field. Her time was up and she was like, 'No, Ho! Ho!' She really enjoyed it."

His next two screen roles require plenty of preparation too. He'll be singing and playing guitar as country and western legend Johnny Cash in I Walk The Line. "I've done three-and-a-half months prepping for that film, and I have never felt so inadequate in my life," says Phoenix.

"It's been quite a journey. I have a much greater respect for singers. It's incredibly vulnerable to go out there in front of a large number of people and sing. I also have a respect for people who lip synch to their singing because it's very difficult to do."

He's already filmed three concert sequences for the movie. Once on stage in costume in front of an audience he immerses himself in the role and says: "One of the things that I always see in bad acting is kind of a self-awareness. Actors who watch their own movies, read their own interviews and look at pictures of themselves, start pulling faces and doing things that they think are really good and interesting. I just try not to be self-conscious and forget about myself."

To play a firefighter in another forthcoming film, Ladder 49, he did three weeks at training academy, followed by working with real firemen.

"I did everything they did, but I felt completely safe. I was absolutely petrified, but I did feel that ultimately I was going to be okay," he says. "One of my great concerns was that one of them would get harmed in trying to help me. It was an amazing experience."

* The Village (12A) opens in cinemas tomorrow (Friday).

Published: 19/08/2004