Link to the n*de photos

Everyone in Wilton Manors saw Igby Goes Down in 2002: the trailer and the title made it sound like a gay coming-out story with a lot of "going down," har har. Actually there's no gay content at all. Igby is a sarcastic 17 year old with an institutionalized stepfather and a dying mother (first rule of fiction: somebody always must be dying or dead). He hooks up with his biological father's "heroin-addicted trophy mistress" and her "terminally bored" friend before euthanizing his mom and getting the heck out of Dodge.

Imagine sitting in the theater expecting a lot of gay stuff, and seeing...this. We were so disgusted that we vowed to never see anything else that the actor appeared in. 20 years later, I didn't even remember his name.

Until I saw a n*de photo from Edgerton (2025). During the COVID pandemic, small-town sheriff Joe Cross disapproves of the mayor's mask edict, so he runs against him, then kills him and his Black-Lives-Matter son, and is eventually killed himself.

I recognized him as the star of Igby, Joaquin Phoenix, still churning out downer movies.

Joaquin Phoenix is straight, with several girlfriends and a kid. And apparently homophobic; he was scheduled to play a gay guy who flees to Mexico with his boyfriend, but "got cold feet" and backed out five days before filming was to begin.