Joaquin Phoenix Confirms: He's Quitting Acting to Become a Rapper!

File this under "Very Bad Idea" and "Don't Quit Your Day Job."

Joaquin Phoenix says there's no hoax about it: He really has given up acting to become a hip-hop musician. He made the announcement as he promotes the "Two Lovers", the film he says will also be his last!

"There's not a hoax," Phoenix said. "Might I be ridiculous? Might my career in music be laughable? Yeah, that's possible, but that's certainly not my intention."

Phoenix said he has no intention of returning to film after "Two Lovers," a romantic drama co-starring Gwyneth Paltrow and reuniting him with James Gray, his director on "The Yards" and "We Own the Night."

While Phoenix regrets that his coming-out party as a rapper came through poor-quality video over the Internet, he said people would have ridiculed him no matter how good his debut was.

"It sucks that, yeah, the footage is out there as like this incredibly bad sound, and you literally can't hear what's happening. It was much better in the club, and I don't know who said that people were booing ... because that was not happening. Unless, of course, it's a pretty big place, and maybe it was happening. But it was not my experience. My experience afterward was I had a lot of dudes come up and say, `We really respect you for doing it, putting yourself out there, and going with it.' Because I think true hip-hop heads know that it's hard, it's going to be a hard transition, and people are going to be lining up just to make fun of me."

Check out the video for yourself.


He can't be serious, right?