What’s not to like about a guy who’s as famous and wealthy as they come, yet makes it a habit to help others?

Who raced to Louisiana after Hurricane Katrina and worked anonymously as a Red Cross volunteer; who donates money to dozens of charities, including the Peace Alliance, Teenage Cancer Trust, Mercy For Animals, and the American Association of Retired Persons; who serves on the board of directors of another, The Lunchbox Fund, a non-profit organization that provides a daily meal for needy school children in South Africa.

What’s not to like about this guy is another habit of his. One that in an interview with Josh Rottenberg of the Los Angeles Times even he calls “awful.”

Joaquin Phoenix, the 45-year-old actor who had a net worth estimated at $30 million even before he starred in “The Joker,” smokes cigarettes.

Now he did tell Rottenberg that he quit for three weeks not so long ago, but then he started doing promotional work for “The Joker” and started again.

“I’ve got to stop,” he admitted.

I read Rottenberg’s article a few days before Thanksgiving, and the I’ve-got-to-stop quotation stayed with me. So when I recently read research on how being deprived of sleep makes it far more likely to make mistakes doing complex tasks the next day, I thought more about the man who said that.

From what I could gather from a quick bit of research, Phoenix is — except for the cigarette smoking — my sort of guy.

He’s a lifelong vegan who’s fully committed to perfecting what he loves, his craft. In fact, he lost more than 50 pounds to portray the Joker and regularly goes to such extremes to fully get into character and give his performances something extra.

And don’t forget that he does more than the typical celebrity philanthropist. While a celebrity who donates money can skeptically be seen as self-serving, one who donates time is clearly something else: selfless.

Now I really researched Phoenix because of you and the fact that you too are probably my sort of a guy (or girl). And though I fully hope that you do not smoke, there’s another important health-and-fitness matter where your response could very well be “I’ve got to stop.”

You would say it immediately after someone warns you that it’s unhealthy to skimp on sleep. Additionally, recent research shows that it’s dangerous, too, that depriving yourself sleep one night makes it far more likely to make mistakes doing highly complex tasks the next day.

Three researchers from Michigan State University recruited 138 subjects for this study and kept 77 of them overnight in their laboratory and awake the entire time. The other 61 were sent home to bed.

Prior to the 61 leaving, however, all 138 were tested in two ways. The second assessed how well subjects could follow an intricate process while frequently being interrupted — just the sort of thing that happens to many of us every day we perform our jobs.

When all 138 were given this second test again the next morning, a pattern emerged. Those who went home and slept produced similar scores both times, but those forced to remain awake doubled their errors the second time.

Their overall score dropped from 85 percent to 70 percent as a result of sleep deprivation.

Michelle E. Stepan, one of the three authors of the paper that was published in the Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, interpreted the results this way for Medical News Today: “Some sleep-deprived people might be able to hold it together under routine tasks, like a doctor taking a patient’s vitals. But our results suggest that completing an activity that requires following multiple steps, such as a doctor completing a medical procedure, is much riskier under conditions of sleep deprivation.”

Now the fact that medical interns at major hospitals regularly do 24-hour shifts is a topic for another day. Today, the focus is on you.

While you may not ever skip a full night’s sleep, you may shortchange yourself over a number of days creating a similarly compromised state.

You probably rationalize the swapping of an hour or two of sleep for an hour or two of activity as a way to be more productive at home or on the job, but this study suggests the opposite. In fact, Kimberly Fenn, another of the paper’s authors, warns that sleep-deprived individuals who decide to drive an automobile are more likely to make the sorts of mistakes that lead to “tragic consequences,” a warning that echoes the findings from a 2017 report by the AAA Foundation for Traffic Safety.

Their data showed that those who slept one to two hours less than usual had a 30 percent increased risk of crashing the next day; moreover, those who missed two to three hours of usual sleep nearly tripled the risk.

For those who missed four or more hours, the risk of a next-day crash increased 10-fold.

In a prior study, the AAA estimated that up to 21 percent of fatal crashes occurred because of sleep deprivation.