By NATASHA STOYNOFF
Toronto Sun SWEET 'N' INNOCENT: That Joaquin Phoenix, who has the on-screen, brooding intensity of older bro River, is described by his co-workers as anything but.
"I'm sweet and vulnerable?" he asked a roomful of reporters at the Ritz Carlton in Hollywood recently, when told that's how his Return To Paradise director described him.
"I don't know," he muses, then lunges toward a male reporter sitting next to him, to give him a big bear hug.
"Ahhhhhh," sigh all the reporters.
But he wasn't so innocent during last year's boys-night-of-debauchery, when he and Paradise co-stars Vince Vaughn and David Conrad took to Thailand bars with a video camera. "We took the mike and danced and danced and sang songs. We did our own show. I sang some ridiculous country song," he recalls of their visit to a Cobra snake show.
"We ruined that poor place. All the tourists were there to see the snakes and there was me and Vince singing -- those poor people!"
Rehearsing for his role as an imprisoned drug dealer almost proved as adventurous. "When I first met (director) Joe Rubin, he said, 'Whoever I cast in this part has to go to prison for a week.' And I said: 'Finally. A director who's crazier than I am!' "
After they shot some agonizing prison scenes, though, Rubin had a change of heart.
"He goes: 'You know, I don't think I have to send you to prison. I think you got it,' " says Phoenix. "And I said, 'Yeah, I don't think we have to do that either.' "
Some of the scenes are so realistic to watch that Phoenix had to comfort sister Summer at a recent screening of the film.
"Ten minutes after the movie, I was still saying: 'Sum, it's only a movie! Take it easy.' "
It may have also been her brother's gaunt figure -- he lost quite a bit of weight for the role -- that upset her.
"I don't remember exactly how much I lost," he says.
"I did some cardio and really cut food out. I was trying to do it properly because I was talking to Matt Damon about it and he had lost a lot of weight for Courage Under Fire and he got really sick. So I was taking the vitamins and did the protein shakes and all that."
Whatever he lost, he made up for recently on a night out with buddy James Caan in New York's Little Italy.
"We went for pasta, and they went crazy for Sonny (Corleone)," he laughs.