Phoenix won the Best Actor award for his lead role in the acclaimed movie Joker.

A well-known animal rights advocate, he took a swipe at the dairy industry, highlighting what he claimed were cruel practices.

“We feel entitled to artificially inseminate a cow and when she gives birth we steal her baby, even though her cries of anguish are unmistakable,” said Phoenix.

“And then take her milk, that’s intended for her calf, and we put it in our coffee, and our cereal.”

He made an appeal to find a more humane way to live.

“I think we fear the idea of personal change because we think that we have to sacrifice something to give something up, but human beings at our best are so inventive and creative and ingenious. And I think that when we use love and compassion as our guiding principles, we can create, develop, and implement systems of change that are beneficial to all sentient beings and to the environment.”

Bridge thought the Phoenix’s comments, along with those of other 2020 Oscars winners, were out of line.

“They are like the royals, Harry and Meghan, lecturing us about climate change then flying around the world in a jet,” said Bridge.

The radio host also said he was a big consumer of New Zealand milk.

“The more people talk about it the more I want it,” he said.

“I am up to about a litre a day of milk. ”

Meanwhile, a Whangarei farmer told Bridge that he was tired of actors speaking on subjects he believes they “know nothing about”.

“They are just actors, they pretend to be what they are not, then they start lecturing us about what we should be doing?

“That really gets up my nose,” he said.

Joaquin Phoenix is an outspoken critic of the dairy industry, and narrated the 2018 documentary Dominion.

The film aims to “expose the dark underbelly of modern animal agriculture, questioning the morality and validity of humankind’s dominion over the animal kingdom.”