I've never met Joaquin myself
but I talked to someone who has. She was a teenager when Walk the Line came out, and she lived in Los Angeles, but one of her biggest complaints about the place was that despite her living there she actually very rarely saw celebrities. But, she said-and this is the story as I best remember it, it's been a while since we spoke, we kind of lost touch-
She was downtown Los Angeles-I remember she said it was the end of summer vacation over in the States-and she had a couple of books for school with her, which ended up being significant. She said she saw him-I think she said at a cafe-and he was with someone she later recognized as being Casey Affleck. Yeah, she got to meet Joaquin and Casey-she's THAT lucky!
She said she'd never got anyone's autograph before and she really, really wanted to ask him, and she didn't have a camera otherwise she'd have asked for a photo! She would only have been about 15 at the time, so she waited around for ages, trying to screw up the courage.He and Casey were talking and she didn't want to interrupt them. She said she was struggling to work up the nerve, because she'd heard from somewhere that Joaquin felt really awkward being approached by fans, but that this might be her only chance to ever meet him.
So, she eventually took a deep breath, walked up to the table, and when he looked up, blurted out (and I'm paraphrasing here, obviously)"I'm really sorry to bother you, and to interrupt, but I thought you were really good in Walk the Line, and please could I have your autograph?" The way she told it, she said she sort of blurted the whole thing out in a rush.
She said, she waited, really nervous-Walk the Line had just come out, this would have been summer of 2005-and then he nodded and said "Sure." He got out a pen and it was then that she realised she didn't have any paper with her except her school books-and he ended up signing them!He signed her rough notebook, and one of her textbooks. Casey signed her rough book too! She said Casey made some joke about how everyone always wanted to get things signed by Joaquin and not him!
Anyway, she said she said thanks and walked away and that Joaquin gave her a smile, and was very polite. She said she treasured the two books all that year and kept the textbook because it had Joaquin Phoenix's signature in! I thought that was really cute!
Anyway, I don't speak to her anymore-it was more of an online thing-and I didn't really get the significance of the thing at the time, because I wasn't into Joaquin then! I only got into him in the last couple of years! Maybe she made the whole thing up, I don't know, but it didn't sound made up.
Anyway, there's someone else's story.
