“I found him to be a much more complex person than I imagined,” Joaquin Phoenix says of his titular character in “Napoleon”

When Scott Ridley saw Joaquin Phoenix’s Academy Award®-winning performance in Joker, the director was reminded of their collaboration on Gladiator, and he knew that Phoenix would be perfect for the titular role in his new film Napoleon: “I saw him and it all came flooding back – how we worked on Gladiator, and what journey he went on with that character, and I thought, ‘God damn, there’s Napoleon.’”

Phoenix admits that he did not know much about the iconic French emperor before joining the project, and was surprised at some facets of the character that he discovered. “I found him to be a much more complex person than I initially imagined, especially the dynamic between him and Josephine,” says the actor who plays Napoleon. “I found him mysterious, and that mystery is something that is always interesting to explore.”

“It was such a privilege to learn about Josephine,” says Vanessa Kirby about playing the one true love of “Napoleon”

Before playing Josephine in Ridley Scott’s action epic Napoleon, Vanessa Kirby took a deep-dive into the character by reading and studying as much as she could.   

“I was actually quite astonished that I knew so little,” she says. “So it was a pleasure: I locked myself away and just read every book I could, about her and about him [Napoleon, played by Academy Award® winner Joaquin Phoenix]. We also went to Paris, to the Napoleon Museum, to Malmaison. I even went to Josephine’s tomb. It was a deep immersion in that history and that period, and it was such a privilege to learn about her.”