Joaquin Phoenix flipped his car near Sunset Boulevard, dangled upside-down in the wreckage, and—like the coolest of Hollywood icons—reached for a smoke. Fortunately, a legendary German director emerged from the mist like a weird art house Batman and called “cut” before Phoenix turned himself into a real-life Joker.

An A-list car crash

It was 2006. Phoenix had an Oscar nod under his belt from Gladiator and was basking in heartthrob status after his critically acclaimed portrayal of Johnny Cash in Walk the Line. He admitted himself to rehab shortly after and later confessed, “I was an actor in L.A. I wanted to have a good time.” But he was having such a good time, he failed to keep it between the lines. Literally.

Director Werner Herzog had a front row seat. “A car in front of me was way, way too fast and went out of control,” he said. “I saw it didn’t look good. And shot up an almost vertical embankment and came down, spinning down, somersaulting down, halfway on top of another car.”

Herzog ran to help. “The car had landed on its roof and was partially crushed. I immediately tried to assess, ‘How many people are in there?’ That’s the first thing I did.”

The director remembered, “I saw only one person, upside down, deployed airbags,” he said. “I in a way recognized that it was Joaquin Phoenix.”

Phoenix remembered it this way: “I remember this knocking on the passenger window. There was this German voice saying, ‘Just relax.’ There’s the airbag, I can’t see and I’m saying, ‘I’m fine. I am relaxed.’ Finally, I rolled down the window and this head pops inside. And he said, ‘No, you’re not.’ And suddenly I said to myself, ‘That’s Werner Herzog.’”

How Joaquin Phoenix went full “Joker” and nearly lit himself on fire

Herzog spotted the real danger. “What I noticed, and he was not really aware, that gasoline was dripping throughout the car,” he said.

That’s when Phoenix reached for a cigarette.

“The moment I diverted my attention from him he had picked up, somehow, a cigarette—and tried to light the cigarette,” Herzog said. “I could not fully reach him. I said to him, ‘Man, relax.’ He said to me, very calmly, ‘I am relaxed.’ I said to him, ‘No, you are not.’”

The 63-year-old director acted fast. “I confiscated the cigarette lighter. And then I crushed the rear window and got him out.”

Phoenix didn’t worry for a moment, “There’s something so calming and beautiful about Werner Herzog’s voice. I felt completely fine and safe.” By the time he stood up, Herzog had vanished. “I got out of the car and I said, ‘Thank you,’ and he was gone.”

Herzog shrugged it off. “It’s not that I saved anyone’s life… Joaquin got away without injuries. The only thing is I noticed gasoline dripping and stopped him lighting a cigarette.”

Joaquin Phoenix walks the line, Herzog rolls credits

No one was hurt, and we all got a Herzog cameo out of it. Joaquin Phoenix lived to smoke another day—just not in a fireball. In a town full of celebrities and chaos, this was somehow a surprisingly peaceful car crash.