LOS ANGELES — Joaquin Phoenix says there's no hoax about it: He really has given up acting to become a hip-hop musician.

Phoenix has been laying down tracks for a rap album in the recording studio he built at his home, the two-time Academy Award nominee said yesterday in an interview to promote what he claims is his final movie, "Two Lovers."

After video hit the Internet last month capturing part of Phoenix's debut rap performance at a Las Vegas club, speculation swirled that he was perpetrating an elaborate practical joke.

"I don't know where that comes from," Phoenix said. "If it comes from people that I've had a falling out with, that are ... (ticked) off at me?"

The video shows Phoenix, in a long, scraggly beard, rapping nearly inaudibly and ends with him losing his footing and falling off the stage. It was an inauspicious start, but Phoenix was adamant that his hip-hop career is real.

"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."

FRANCE KNIGHTS POTTER AUTHOR

PARIS — Harry Potter author J.K. Rowling brought a second French Legion of Honor award into her family yesterday, decades after her French great-grandfather received the honor in 1924 for battlefield courage during World War I.

President Nicolas Sarkozy bestowed the title of knight in the Legion of Honor on Rowling, who used her acceptance speech to apologize for having given the main villain in her series a French name, Lord Voldemort.

"I cannot say that I think that I truly deserve it, but the Legion of Honor has a particular and personal meaning," she said in a ceremony in an ornate presidential palace ballroom.

Rowling also thanked her readers in France "for not having held a grudge against me for having given a French name to my evil character."

"I can assure you that no anti-French feeling was at the origin of this choice," she said.

BALE GOES BALLISTIC ON MOVIE SET

LOS ANGELES — Dark Knight indeed.

Christian Bale can be heard in newly surfaced audio delivering a long, profanity-laced verbal thrashing to a cinematographer and anyone who tried to calm him down on the set of the upcoming "Terminator Salvation."

In the three-minute clip, posted Monday at www.TMZ.com, the actor who starred as Batman in "The Dark Knight" rails against cinematographer Shane Hurlbut for apparently walking behind co-star Bryce Dallas Howard and through Bale's line of sight, considered a film-set foul.

The incident took place last July on the set at Kirtland Air Force Base in New Mexico, days before Bale's mother and sister accused him of assault in London, although charges were never filed in that case.

LIBEL SUIT FILED AGAINST SPEARS

LOS ANGELES — Britney Spears' former manager, Osama "Sam" Lutfi, has filed a libel and defamation lawsuit against the singer and her parents.

Lutfi filed his claim yesterday, just three days after a judge granted a restraining order against Lutfi to Spears' father, who took control of her life as her conservator with a court order a year ago.

In the lawsuit, Lutfi claims that he urged the singer to reconcile with her parents.

Lutfi's libel claim says a recent book by Spears' mother, "Through the Storm," is filled with "false statements."