Joaquin Phoenix may have won big at the Screen Actors Guild Awards but he didn’t stay long enough to celebrate. The SAG Awards Outstanding Performance by a Male Actor-winner chose to skip out on the event’s after-parties. He instead participated in a vigil for pigs before they were butchered at a Los Angeles slaughterhouse.

The appearance came as a welcome surprise to his fellow activists on Sunday night. Phoenix reportedly drove around 5 miles to Farmer John Packing Co. He joined dozens of demonstrators who meet up at the slaughterhouse twice a week. The “pig vigils” — as they call it — has been held since 2017 on Wednesdays and Sundays.

According to multiple news outlets, Farmer John let the trucks that transported the pigs stop by for 2 minutes. Activists took this short time to comfort the animals and give them a drink of water. TMZ reports that over 7,000 pigs are transported to the slaughterhouse to be butchered every day.

Phoenix engaged with the protestors and squirted water into the pigs’ snouts himself. Speaking to Jane Velez-Mitchell, he pointed out the importance of joining the vigil saying, “Most people don’t really know of the torture and murder in the meat and dairy industry.”

“We have moral obligations to talk about it and expose it for what it really is. We are so indoctrinated with these happy images of animals on farms, on the covers of meat containers, at restaurants and it’s a lie,” he continued. Phoenix is known for joining climate change and animal cruelty demonstrations with his girlfriend Rooney Mara.