Few actors make discomfort as compelling as Joaquin Phoenix.

Across more than three decades, Phoenix has played Roman emperors, lonely writers, damaged veterans, musicians, killers and comic-book villains. His characters often seem to be fighting something inside themselves long before the outside world becomes dangerous.

That unpredictability has also made his filmography unusually difficult to rank. His four Academy Award-nominated performances alone span Gladiator, Walk the Line, The Master and Joker, with the latter finally earning him the Oscar for Best Actor in 2020.

From massive Hollywood spectacles to intimate independent dramas, these are 10 movies that best demonstrate why Phoenix remains one of the most distinctive actors of his generation.

10. Signs (2002)

Role: Merrill Hess

M. Night Shyamalan’s Signs is remembered primarily as a suspenseful story about a family confronting an apparent extraterrestrial threat, but Phoenix gives the movie much of its warmth.

He plays Merrill, the younger brother of Mel Gibson’s Graham Hess, a former minister whose faith has collapsed after tragedy. Merrill could easily have been little more than comic relief. Instead, Phoenix makes him loyal, funny and quietly vulnerable.

The performance is considerably more restrained than the explosive characters Phoenix would become famous for later. That is precisely what makes it interesting. Signs demonstrates how effective he can be without dominating every scene.

9. The Immigrant (2013)

Role: Bruno Weiss

James Gray has repeatedly brought out a different side of Phoenix, and The Immigrant contains one of their most complicated collaborations.

Set in 1920s New York, the film centers on Ewa, played by Marion Cotillard, a Polish immigrant struggling to survive after arriving in America. Phoenix plays Bruno, a manipulative man who helps her while simultaneously exploiting her vulnerability.

Bruno initially appears easy to hate. Phoenix gradually reveals something more unstable beneath that cruelty — jealousy, loneliness, desire and self-loathing.

Rather than asking the audience to forgive him, the performance makes Bruno disturbingly human. It is the kind of morally uncomfortable role Phoenix has always handled particularly well.

8. Inherent Vice (2014)

Role: Larry “Doc” Sportello

Paul Thomas Anderson’s adaptation of Thomas Pynchon’s novel throws Phoenix into a hazy mixture of detective mystery, stoner comedy and 1970s paranoia.

As private investigator Doc Sportello, Phoenix spends much of Inherent Vice looking simultaneously confused and strangely perceptive. His former girlfriend reappears with a bizarre story involving her wealthy lover, and Doc is soon stumbling through an increasingly tangled conspiracy.

The film deliberately refuses to make everything easy to follow. Phoenix turns that confusion into part of the entertainment.

His performance earned a Golden Globe nomination for Best Actor in a Musical or Comedy.

It may not be his most accessible movie, but for viewers willing to follow Anderson into the fog, Inherent Vice shows Phoenix at his funniest and weirdest.

7. C’mon C’mon (2021)

Role: Johnny

After so many performances built around rage, obsession or psychological collapse, C’mon C’mon offered Phoenix something strikingly different: gentleness.

Directed by Mike Mills and filmed in black and white, the movie follows Johnny, a radio journalist who unexpectedly takes responsibility for his young nephew Jesse, played by Woody Norman.

Their relationship becomes the emotional center of a story about adults trying — and often failing — to understand children.

There are no supervillains, empires or violent conspiracies here. Phoenix works almost entirely through patience, awkwardness and small emotional shifts. The film received strong critical recognition and was named among the National Board of Review’s top independent films of 2021.

It remains one of the best examples of how powerful Phoenix can be when he lowers the temperature.

6. You Were Never Really Here (2017)

Role: Joe

Lynne Ramsay’s You Were Never Really Here takes the familiar idea of a violent rescuer and strips away nearly everything conventional about it.

Phoenix plays Joe, a traumatized veteran hired to find a missing girl. He is physically intimidating, but Ramsay and Phoenix are far more interested in the broken person underneath.

Violence arrives suddenly rather than triumphantly. Joe is not presented as an invincible action hero. He is exhausted, emotionally scarred and constantly close to collapse.

Phoenix’s performance won Best Actor at the 2017 Cannes Film Festival, while Ramsay shared the festival’s screenplay prize.

It is among the darkest movies on this list — and one of Phoenix’s most haunting performances.

5. Gladiator (2000)

Role: Commodus

Before Phoenix became primarily known as a leading man, Gladiator proved how unforgettable he could be as a villain.

Ridley Scott’s Roman epic pits Russell Crowe’s Maximus against Phoenix’s Commodus, the insecure emperor whose hunger for love and power produces increasingly monstrous behavior.

Phoenix avoids playing Commodus as simply evil. His desperation for approval makes him even more disturbing. He can appear childish in one scene, calculating in another and terrifying moments later.

The role brought Phoenix his first Academy Award nomination, for Best Supporting Actor. Gladiator itself received 12 Oscar nominations and won five, including Best Picture.

More than two decades later, Commodus remains one of the performances most closely associated with Phoenix’s career.

4. Walk the Line (2005)

Role: Johnny Cash

Playing an internationally recognizable musician creates a particular problem for any actor: imitation is easy; transformation is much harder.

Phoenix largely avoided that trap in Walk the Line.

As Johnny Cash, he captures the singer’s unmistakable physical presence while also building the performance around addiction, ambition, family wounds and Cash’s turbulent relationship with June Carter, played by Reese Witherspoon.

Phoenix performed the songs himself, helping the musical scenes feel like part of the character rather than interruptions in the drama.

The performance earned him an Academy Award nomination for Best Actor and a Golden Globe victory for Best Actor in a Musical or Comedy. The film also won the Golden Globe for Best Motion Picture — Musical or Comedy.

It was the movie that confirmed Phoenix could carry a major Hollywood drama almost entirely on his shoulders.

3. Her (2013)

Role: Theodore Twombly

Spike Jonze’s Her gave Phoenix one of the strangest romantic challenges imaginable: creating convincing chemistry with a character the audience never physically sees.

He plays Theodore, a lonely writer living in a near-future Los Angeles who develops a relationship with an artificially intelligent operating system named Samantha, voiced by Scarlett Johansson.

What could have become a technological gimmick instead turns into a melancholy story about intimacy.

Phoenix does enormous amounts of emotional work alone on screen. A smile, hesitation or sudden change in his voice has to communicate the evolution of a relationship occurring largely through an earpiece.

His performance earned a Golden Globe nomination.

As artificial intelligence has become increasingly embedded in everyday life, the questions Her raises about companionship, loneliness and human connection have only become more fascinating.

2. Joker (2019)

Role: Arthur Fleck / Joker

No Joaquin Phoenix performance reached a larger audience — or generated more conversation — than Joker.

Todd Phillips’ film reimagined the famous Batman villain through Arthur Fleck, an isolated Gotham man whose life gradually spirals toward violence and the identity audiences already know awaits him.

Phoenix physically transformed himself for the role, but the performance goes far beyond appearance. His unusual movements, unsettling laughter and sudden emotional shifts make Arthur difficult to predict from moment to moment.

The movie became a major awards contender, and Phoenix won the Academy Award for Best Actor on Feb. 9, 2020. He also won the Golden Globe for Best Actor in a Drama.

For many viewers, Joker will always be Phoenix’s defining movie.

But his most extraordinary performance came seven years earlier.

1. The Master (2012)

Role: Freddie Quell

If Joker is Joaquin Phoenix at his most famous, The Master may be Joaquin Phoenix at his most complete.

Paul Thomas Anderson’s drama casts him as Freddie Quell, a deeply troubled World War II veteran who falls into the orbit of charismatic movement leader Lancaster Dodd, played by Philip Seymour Hoffman.

Freddie seems almost physically unable to contain what is happening inside him. Phoenix twists his posture, tightens his face and delivers dialogue through clenched intensity. Opposite Hoffman’s controlled confidence, Freddie appears instinctive and volatile.

The relationship between the two men becomes the movie’s engine: part friendship, part power struggle, part psychological dependency.

Phoenix received his third Academy Award nomination for the performance. The Master earned three acting nominations in total, recognizing Phoenix, Hoffman and Amy Adams.

It also represented something essential about Phoenix’s career.

His greatest strength has never simply been disappearing beneath makeup or reproducing a famous person’s mannerisms. It is his ability to make characters feel as though they might behave in ways even they do not fully understand.

That quality connects Commodus, Johnny Cash, Theodore Twombly, Joe, Arthur Fleck and Freddie Quell despite how different their worlds are.

Phoenix finally received his Oscar for Joker, but The Master remains perhaps the purest demonstration of what makes him such an unusual screen presence: uncomfortable, vulnerable, unpredictable — and almost impossible to look away from.