Joaquin Phoenix’s Lifetime of Animal Love

Joaquin Phoenix turns 48 on Friday (October 28), which means the Academy Award-winning actor has been an advocate for animal rights for a solid 45 years.

Phoenix went vegan at the tender age of three, after witnessing what happens to fish after they are reeled in. Since then he has been passionate about animal rights, whether advocating for cows, sheep, monkeys, fish – or just speaking generally on our fraught relationship with our fellow animals.

“I think that we have been very disconnected from the natural world,” Phoenix said in 2020 in his Best Actor-winning speech (for the titular role in Joker). “We feel entitled to artificially inseminate a cow and when she gives birth, we steal her baby, even though her cries of anguish are unmistakable. And then we take her milk, which is intended for her calf, and we put it in our coffee and our cereal.”

Of course Phoenix is a longtime PETA fixture, having appeared on the advocacy group’s billboards, in videos, and with public appearances. Earlier this year the actor wrote the forward to the 30th-anniversary edition of “Free the Animals,” a book by PETA founder and president Ingrid Newkirk. Phoenix then acquired the film rights to the story – about the radical Animal Liberation Front – which inspired VegNews to write “Why Joaquin Phoenix’s Next Oscar Could Be For a Vegan Film.”

We look forward to that. Many happy returns on the day, sir.

Watch Phoenix's anti-wool message here: youtube.com/watch?v=so27Y3kI2Ok&t=4s.

Photo credit: PETA via Instagram