River Phoenix

• 1. Introduction

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  River Phoenix was an American actor and musician, and at the 92nd Academy Awards his brother Joaquin spoke one of River's lyrics aloud. Accepting the Best Actor prize, Joaquin told the room that River wrote it at 17: "run to the rescue with love and peace will follow." Long after River's death, those words still reached the biggest audience in film. The life behind them began far from any film set. It started with a family that rarely stayed in one place, and with a boy who earned his first money by singing. How did that boy become one of the most admired young actors of his generation? Why did his friends and relatives say music was his real passion? And what happened on a sidewalk outside a Hollywood nightclub on the last night of October 1993?

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• 2. A Wandering Childhood

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  River Jude Phoenix was born on the 23rd of August 1970 in Madras, Oregon, the first child of Arlyn Dunetz and John Lee Bottom. His parents named him after the river of life in Hermann Hesse's novel Siddhartha. His middle name came from the Beatles song "Hey Jude." The surname Phoenix was adopted after his eighth or ninth birthday. He later described his parents to People as "hippieish."

  His mother, Arlyn, was born in New York to Jewish parents whose families had emigrated from Russia and Hungary. His father was a lapsed Catholic from Fontana, California. Arlyn met him in 1968 while hitchhiking in California, and they married on the 13th of September 1969. River soon had four younger siblings: Rain, born in 1972, Joaquin in 1974, Liberty in 1976 and Summer in 1978. He also had a paternal half-sister, Jodean, born in 1964.

  In 1973 the family joined a religious group called the Children of God and settled in Caracas, Venezuela. The group put them to work as missionaries and fruit gatherers. Between the ages of three and seven, River lived in Venezuela, Puerto Rico and Mexico. His parents grew disillusioned with the group and left in 1977. Phoenix rarely spoke about the experience, but an Esquire article in 1994 quoted him saying, "They're disgusting, they're ruining people's lives."

  By the time he was nine, River was living in Los Angeles. Life stayed hard. He said the family lived in a "desperate situation," and he played guitar while his sister sang on street corners for money and food. The household moved more than forty times by the time he was 18. He never attended formal school. Screenwriter Naomi Foner later said, "He was totally, totally without education," though she noted he could read and write. Filmmaker George Sluizer claimed he was dyslexic.

  The singing in Westwood, Los Angeles, soon caught the ear of a talent agent named Iris Burton. She stopped for four of the children singing for spare change, and she liked the family so much that she began representing them.

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• 3. Rise to Stardom

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  At age ten, Phoenix auditioned for television commercials and landed work for Mitsubishi, Ocean Spray and Saks Fifth Avenue. Paramount casting director Penny Marshall then signed him and the other children. River and Rain were first assigned to a show called Real Kids, where they warmed up the audience. In 1982 he was cast in the short-lived CBS series Seven Brides for Seven Brothers as the youngest brother, Guthrie McFadden.

  The year 1984 brought a run of television roles. He played young Jeffie Crawford in the television movie Celebrity. He starred in an ABC Afterschool Special, Backwards: The Riddle of Dyslexia, as a boy who discovers he has dyslexia, with Joaquin in a small role. The special was critically acclaimed. He also played Robert F. Kennedy Jr. in Robert Kennedy and His Times. Then came a major part in Surviving: A Family in Crisis, alongside Molly Ringwald and Heather O'Rourke. Halfway through that shoot, Burton called about a feature film.

  In October 1984 Phoenix won the role of Wolfgang Müller, a geeky boy scientist, in Joe Dante's big-budget science-fiction film Explorers. Ethan Hawke was among his co-stars. The film reached theatres in the summer of 1985 and was his first major motion picture role. His last television role before film stardom came in October 1986, in the CBS movie Circle of Violence: A Family Drama. It told a story of elder abuse and co-starred Tuesday Weld and Geraldine Fitzgerald.

  Rob Reiner's coming-of-age film Stand by Me made Phoenix a household name at 16. Filming ran from the 17th of June 1985 to late August 1985, so he was 14 for most of it. The Washington Post said he gave the film its "centre of gravity." Phoenix said he identified so strongly with his character, Chris Chambers, that he might have needed a psychiatrist without his family to return to.

  He then played the son of Harrison Ford and Helen Mirren's characters in Peter Weir's The Mosquito Coast. Weir said, "He was obviously going to be a movie star," and added, "Laurence Olivier never had what River had." The five-month shoot took place in Belize. Phoenix was surprised by the poor reception, because he felt more secure about his work in it than in Stand by Me.

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• 4. Leading Man Years

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  The lead in A Night in the Life of Jimmy Reardon, in 1988, left Phoenix disappointed. He blamed himself, saying the comedy was a stretch and he was not sure he was the right person. The same year he starred in Little Nikita opposite Sidney Poitier. In 1987 he had bought his family a ranch in Micanopy, Florida, near Gainesville, along with a spread in Costa Rica.

  Sidney Lumet's Running on Empty was his sixth feature film. At 18, Phoenix won the National Board of Review Award for Best Supporting Actor. He also earned Golden Globe and Academy Award nominations, making him the sixth-youngest nominee in that Oscar category. When Kevin Kline won, River jumped to his feet. His mother Arlyn recalled that she had to stop him from running to hug Kline, because "it never crossed his mind that he hadn't won."

  In 1989 he played a young Indiana Jones in the prologue of Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, directed by Steven Spielberg and starring Harrison Ford. Photographer Bruce Weber shot him for Vogue, and in 1990 he became spokesperson for a Gap campaign. That year he also appeared in the comedy I Love You to Death with Kevin Kline, Tracey Ullman, Joan Plowright and Keanu Reeves. He had met Reeves while Reeves was filming Parenthood with Joaquin and with Martha Plimpton. Phoenix had reportedly auditioned for the role of Bill in Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure before Alex Winter took it.

  In Nancy Savoca's Dogfight, in 1991, Phoenix played a young Marine on the night before he ships out to Vietnam in November 1963. The story is set in San Francisco. His co-star Lili Taylor said the role caused him real discomfort, because a Marine was so far from the hippie he was.

  Gus Van Sant's avant-garde film My Own Private Idaho reunited him with Reeves. Phoenix played Michael Waters, a gay hustler. Newsweek critic David Ansen called the performance "stunningly sensitive," and praised a campfire scene in which Mike awkwardly declares his unrequited love for Scott. Phoenix won the Volpi Cup for Best Actor at the 1991 Venice Film Festival. At 21 he also took the Independent Spirit Award for Best Male Lead, becoming its second-youngest winner, along with the National Society of Film Critics Award for Best Actor. The film helped bring queer cinema to a mainstream audience.

  George Lucas then asked him to reprise young Indiana Jones in the television series The Young Indiana Jones Chronicles. Phoenix declined, having worked hard to leave television behind. Corey Carrier and Sean Patrick Flannery played the role instead. He went on to make the thriller Sneakers with Robert Redford and Poitier in 1992, and then began Sam Shepard's ghost western Silent Tongue. He lost the part of Paul in A River Runs Through It to Brad Pitt. The last picture he finished was Peter Bogdanovich's The Thing Called Love, in 1993, and Silent Tongue reached audiences only in 1994.

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• 5. Music Before Film

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  Phoenix began teaching himself guitar at age five, and close friends and relatives said music was his true passion. Though his films brought in most of the family's income, he told E! in 1988 that the move to Los Angeles was meant to let him and his sister become recording artists. In his telling, he fell into commercials for financial reasons and acting became appealing afterward. Before he had an agent, he and his siblings played cover songs in Westwood, where police often moved them along because crowds blocked the sidewalk.

  With early film earnings he saved $650 for a guitar, his prized possession. On it he wrote what he called "progressive, ethereal folk-rock." In 1986, while making A Night in the Life of Jimmy Reardon, he wrote and recorded the song "Heart to Get" for the end credits. 20th Century Fox cut it from the finished film, but director William Richert restored it in his director's cut years later. During that shoot Phoenix also met Chris Blackwell of Island Records, which led to a two-year development deal.

  Phoenix disliked the idea of being a solo artist and wanted a band. Aleka's Attic formed in 1987, with his sister Rain in the lineup. He insisted the band would not use his name to win bookings, except for charity benefits. His first release was "Across the Way," co-written with bandmate Josh McKay, on a 1989 benefit album for PETA called Tame Yourself. In 1991 he wrote and recorded a spoken-word piece, "Curi Curi," for Milton Nascimento's album TXAI. The Aleka's Attic track "Too Many Colors" appeared in My Own Private Idaho.

  Aleka's Attic disbanded in 1992, but he kept writing. While shooting The Thing Called Love, he wrote and recorded "Lone Star State of Mine," which he sings in the film. It was left off the soundtrack album. The music kept appearing after his death. In 1996 the Aleka's Attic song "Note to a Friend" came out on the benefit album In Defense of Animals; Volume II, with Flea of Red Hot Chili Peppers on bass. John Frusciante released two songs they made together, "Height Down" and "Well I've Been," on his 1997 album Smile from the Streets You Hold.

  Phoenix was also an investor in the original House of Blues in Cambridge, Massachusetts, founded by his friend and Sneakers co-star Dan Aykroyd. The club opened to the public after first serving a meal to a group of homeless people on Thanksgiving Day 1992.

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• 6. Beliefs and Burdens

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  Phoenix had been a vegan since age seven, and he became a prominent spokesperson for PETA. The group gave him its Humanitarian Award in 1992 for his fund-raising. Martha Plimpton remembered a fancy dinner in Manhattan when they were fifteen. When she ordered soft-shell crabs, he left the restaurant and walked along Park Avenue, crying. He also turned down a lucrative advertising job because it would have required him to wear leather.

  His activism reached beyond animals. In 1990 he wrote an Earth Day essay for his young fans, printed in Seventeen magazine. He gave money to many environmental and humanitarian groups and bought 800 acres of endangered rainforest in Costa Rica. He spoke at rallies, and his band played benefits for well-known charities and for local ones around Gainesville, Florida. In 1992 he campaigned for Bill Clinton in the presidential election.

  His private life carried a heavier weight. In February 1986, during The Mosquito Coast, 15-year-old Phoenix began a romance with Plimpton. They had met a year earlier and at first disliked each other. They co-starred again in Running on Empty, but the relationship ended in June 1989 because of his drug use. Plimpton said, "He had to change himself, and he didn't want to yet." The two stayed close friends until his death.

  Around the time of My Own Private Idaho, he began using marijuana, cocaine and heroin with some friends. Gus Van Sant's roman a clef Pink asserts that Phoenix was only an occasional drug user, and that alcohol was the more serious problem. Phoenix always tried to hide his addictions, fearing they would ruin his career as they had ruined his relationship with Plimpton. In the last year of his life he dated Samantha Mathis, his co-star in The Thing Called Love.

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• 7. The Last Night

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  On the 30th of October 1993, Phoenix arrived at The Viper Room, a Hollywood nightclub partly owned by Johnny Depp. He had just returned to Los Angeles after a week in New Mexico. Before that he spent six to seven weeks in Utah finishing three weeks of interior shots for his last project, Dark Blood. With him were Samantha Mathis, his brother Joaquin and his sister Rain. He was due to perform with the band P, which included Flea and John Frusciante of the Red Hot Chili Peppers, Gibby Haynes of the Butthole Surfers, Al Jourgensen of Ministry and Depp.

  Bob Forrest, in his book Running with Monsters, wrote that Phoenix spent the days before his death on a binge with Frusciante. He said they used cocaine and heroin and had not slept for several days. Mathis later said she had known Phoenix to be sober during their relationship. She added that she sensed something wrong that night, and that he was high in a way that made her uncomfortable. She also said the heroin that killed him came only after he reached the club.

  According to Forrest, Phoenix tapped him on the shoulder during the performance and said he thought he had overdosed. Forrest doubted it, since Phoenix could still stand and talk, and offered to take him home. Phoenix declined, saying he felt better. Mathis said she went to the restroom and returned to see Phoenix scuffling with another man. Bouncers removed both men. She shouted, "What have you done? What are you on?" Someone answered, "Leave him alone, you're spoiling his high."

  Moments later, a commotion broke out and Phoenix was on the sidewalk, convulsing. Joaquin called 911, and Rain gave him mouth-to-mouth resuscitation. Haynes recalled that the band was playing a song called "Michael Stipe" when the news reached the stage. Flea ran outside and rode with Phoenix to Cedars-Sinai Medical Center. Paramedics had found him in apparent cardiac arrest, and efforts at the hospital failed. He was pronounced dead at 1:51 a.m. on the 31st of October 1993, at age 23.

  Forensic examination found cocaine, heroin, marijuana, a benzodiazepine and propoxyphene. The listed cause of death was acute multiple drug intoxication. A coroner's spokesman said the cocaine and morphine levels were each enough on their own to cause death. Dark Blood was finally released in 2012, with Phoenix in his final film role as a character called Boy.

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• 8. Legacy and Lost Roles

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  Outside The Viper Room, fans left flowers, pictures and candles on the sidewalk, and wrote messages on the walls. A sign in the window offered respect and love to River and his family and said the club would close temporarily. It stayed shut for a week. Depp closed it again every year on the 31st of October until he sold his share in 2004.

  On the 24th of November 1993, his mother Arlyn, who later changed her name to Heart, printed an open letter in the Los Angeles Times. She wrote that River "was not a regular drug user," and described the Halloween club scene as beyond his usual experience. She hoped his death would draw the world's attention to how the spirits of his generation were being worn down.

  Before his death, Phoenix had been seen as a clean and attractive role model, an image he complained about in interviews. One account called him "a cleaned-up '90s James Dean," and the sudden deaths of the two actors invited comparison.

  Two weeks after he died, Phoenix had been due to start Neil Jordan's Interview with the Vampire as the interviewer, Daniel Molloy. Christian Slater took the part and gave his entire $250,000 salary to Earth Save and Earth Trust, two of Phoenix's favorite charities. The film is dedicated to him after the end credits. Gus Van Sant had persuaded him to play Cleve Jones in a planned film about Harvey Milk, and the role went to Emile Hirsch in 2008. Van Sant also mentioned an unrealized project about Andy Warhol.

  He had also signed on to lead Broken Dreams, a script by John Boorman and Neil Jordan, with Winona Ryder, and Caleb Landry Jones was cast in 2012. Phoenix had wanted to play Jim Carroll in The Basketball Diaries, and carried the memoir around in 1988. Leonardo DiCaprio, then 19, made the film in 1995. DiCaprio also took Rimbaud in Total Eclipse, and reportedly Phoenix was James Cameron's original choice for Jack Dawson in Titanic.

  The reach of his example kept growing. Leonardo DiCaprio, Jared Leto and James Franco have credited him as an influence. As teenagers, Matt Damon and Ben Affleck used "RiverP" as the password on a shared bank account. Empire magazine ranked him No. 86 on its 1997 list of the top 100 movie stars. Milton Nascimento wrote a song about him after seeing The Mosquito Coast, and Van Sant dedicated his novel Pink to him. Tetsuya Nomura modeled Squall Leonhart in Final Fantasy VIII on his face, and gave Squall Phoenix's birthdate. Joaquin Phoenix and Rooney Mara named their son River.

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