HOLLYWOOD — It seemed a good day to be Joaquin Phoenix — noon, a Tuesday, the sun-dappled patio of the Chateau Marmont.

Phoenix entered holding a motorcycle helmet and sunglasses. He has two new movies out, "We Own the Night" and "Reservation Road," his first since his interpretation of a young Johnny Cash in 2005's "Walk the Line" earned him a best-actor Oscar nomination. The new films are both heavy-duty dramas requiring from Phoenix what he has evoked with stunning professionalism as an actor of only 32 — a turmoil and vulnerability that would be almost pretty-boy, were it not for the infamous blemish above his lip, a lack of physical perfection that paradoxically means he can't be, you know, Spider-Man.

But "Walk the Line" made him, finally, a star. It was a role — biopic of icon, made the year after the icon's death — that could have been disastrous but was, instead, remarkable for the way it interpreted Cash's look and sound without lapsing into impression.

Phoenix says he hasn't seen the film. The last time he watched himself in a movie, he says, was "Ladder 49," in 2004, in which he was a firefighter. Jay Russell, who directed that movie, said: "Actors who are more technically trained, British guys, they don't mind watching themselves because they can check their technique. Joaq comes from the opposite school."

So Phoenix runs on intuition, his own native intelligence, fearful of becoming objective, self-aware. Whether this is actorly artifice or an extension of the honesty he leaves on-screen, he rejects the idea that — for him — watching his work would be instructive.

"I am abhorrently selfish when it comes to making movies. I have to say that I can't recall when I did see a movie I was in, I can't recall it being a pleasurable experience. And it also was of no use to me."

He had shambled onto the Marmont patio through the back, very punctual. Phoenix had his BlackBerry on the table but otherwise arrived unencumbered, dressed in cords, a loose-fitting Diesel shirt. He mentioned his girlfriend, although not by name.

"I know this sounds insane, but he's quite shy," said James Gray, who directed Phoenix in "The Yards" and "We Own the Night."

Actually it didn't sound insane. Phoenix — loath to analyze a performance, or discuss his personal life — comes off as engaging about his unwillingness to engage. "I enjoy the actual work, do you know?" he said. "I mean, I enjoy between 'Action' and 'Cut' and that's about all I enjoy on a movie. I don't enjoy trailer life. I don't sit in my trailer and watch TV or try to hang out and have friends come by."

"So what do you do?" he was asked.

"You basically sit and wait. It's like a ... horse waiting in the race thing, just waiting for the gate to open."

"So you go back in your trailer and you sit and you're sort of brooding? Not brooding, but you're sort of sitting. ... "

"It's amazing that if you're not watching 'Friends' and, like, drinking champagne with your friends, then you're brooding?"

"No, no, no. Reading, writing, talking on the phone, whatever."

"No, I mean, you look at your script, and you think about the scene coming up, and you work on them. ... Most of my rehearsals take place in my head and it's like, that's what that time is for. And sleep," he added. "I will sleep."

That line — "I will sleep" — is said with a shy flourish. Sometimes Phoenix's expression resolves itself into the hormonally overloaded, tragically love-struck teenager in "To Die For," the dark comedy in which his talent burst into view.

"Reservation Road," you sense, is another Oscar-radar performance. Although in the film he's not a Roman emperor ("Gladiator") or porn-shop clerk ("8MM"). He's — get this — a rumpled college professor with a beard.

Phoenix spends the entirety of the film more or less in a state of obsession and anguish. Based on the novel by John Burnham Schwartz, "Reservation Road" is about a husband and father, Ethan Learner (Phoenix), undone by the hit-and-run death of his 7-year-old son, who abandons his family, emotionally, avoiding his grief by channeling it into hunting down the perpetrator, another town resident played by Mark Ruffalo.

"He's both devoted to the craft of acting and, like, intimidated by the — not intimidated, it's not the right word. I think the process is painful to him," said "Reservation Road" director Terry George, who also directed Phoenix in "Hotel Rwanda."

Next month, Phoenix goes to New York to shoot "Two Lovers" with Gwyneth Paltrow, a "tender little romance," funny and sad, according to writer-director Gray. It'll mark the third film he and Phoenix have done together.

Their most recent, "We Own the Night," is set in the New York of the late 1980s and has Phoenix on familiar ground as the black sheep in a family of cops from Queens, a nightclub manager caught between a professional alliance with a vicious Russian cocaine dealer and his family of law enforcement.