【明報專訊】．Joaquin Phoenix

．Age: 45

．Nationality: American

Devoted vegan

THE movie Joker was awarded the highest prize, namely the Golden Lion, at the 76th Venice Film Festival. Joaquin Phoenix, who played Arthur Fleck, the Joker, received rave reviews for his stunning performance.

Despite his fame as an actor, he is also a devoted and passionate vegan and animal rights activist. Guess what? He has been a vegan since the age of three! He is also the executive producer of the documentary What The Health. The documentary reveals some secrets within pharmaceutical (製藥業), agribusiness (農業綜合企業) , and food processing industries. It aims at showing us the deleterious effects of these industrial food products on our health. Besides, he often condemns (譴責) meat-eating on different occasions.

■Photo Story

This is Joaquin's older brother River Phoenix. Interestingly, Joaquin's siblings, River, Rain, Summer and Liberty are all actors. River was nominated at the Oscars for Best Supporting Actor at an early age 19. Regrettably, River died of a drug overdose at 23 in 1993. What a tragedy.

■English highway﹕Despite

without taking any notice of or being influenced by.

e.g. Despite the hot weather, they enjoyed the outdoor event a lot today.

■Gear up

Find a synonym (同義詞) from the passage for each of the words below.

(1) discloses (v) ________

(2) harmful (adj) ________

(3) criticizes (v) ________

(Answers on next text)

■Glossary

stunning (adj) 迷人的

passionate (adj) 熱情的

vegan (n) 素食主義者

tragedy (adj) 悲劇

[Smarties' Power English 第258期]