Joaquin Phoenix has revealed that he "started to go mad" while preparing to take on the titular role of the Gotham City super-villain in the upcoming Joker movie.

Loading

The Many Origin Stories of the Joker 22 IMAGES

Joker Final Trailer: 44 Gorgeous Cinematic Moments 46 IMAGES

Speaking at the Venice Film Festival on Saturday, Phoenix discussed the extensive groundwork that he put into crafting his own unique interpretation of the iconic DC character. The acclaimed actor reportedly cited his rapid weight loss as a major contributing factor, as THR claims he lost 52lbs to morph into the Clown Prince of Crime."The first thing was the weight loss, that's really what I started with. As it turns out, that impacts your psychology, and you really start to go mad when you lose that much weight in that amount of time," Phoenix recalled at the press conference, per ET Canada . "There's also a book about political assassins that I thought was interesting, and breaks down the different types of personalities that do those sorts of things [I do in the film]."Phoenix also admitted that he wanted to avoid drawing upon past performances of the Joker on the silver screen, from the likes of Jack Nicholson, Heath Ledger and Jared Leto , as he ultimately aimed to make his creation "unidentifiable.""I wanted the freedom to create something that wasn't identifiable. This is a fictional character, and I didn't want a psychiatrist to be able to identify the kind of person he was," Phoenix said. "We were going into medication and what issues he might have, but [I thought] let's step away from that. We want to have the room to create what we want."Throughout the course of shooting, every day felt like we were discovering new aspects of the character and shades of his personality, up until the very last day."In our review of Joker, we praised Phoenix's "fully committed performance" and Todd Phillips' "masterful albeit loose reinvention of the DC source material" to conclude that the upcoming film "isn't just an awesome comic book movie, it's an awesome movie, period."For more on the DC origin movie, find out how the story takes inspiration from The King of Comedy , discover whether a potential sequel could be on the cards , and take a look at our round-up of early reviews and reactions to the standalone film , which will released in theaters on October 4, 2019.

Adele Ankers is a Freelance Entertainment Journalist. You can reach her on Twitter