River Jude Phoenix was an actor and musician from the United States. As the older brother of Rain Phoenix, Joaquin Phoenix, Liberty Phoenix, and Summer Phoenix, Phoenix grew up in a traveling household. Despite having little formal education, he demonstrated a natural gift for the guitar.
Phoenix was the first child of Arlyn Dunetz and John Lee Bottom and was born on August 23, 1970, in Madras, Oregon.
Phoenix’s middle name comes from the Beatles’ song “Hey Jude,” and his parents named him after the river of life from Hermann Hesse’s novel Siddhartha.
The Phoenix family relocated to Los Angeles, California after returning to the US. The children would perform on street corners in the Westwood district of the city in order to get money for their family.
Phoenix never attended an academic institution. Iris Burton, a talent agent, eventually caught the children’s attention and chose to represent them.
Phoenix later made appearances in television ads for companies like Ocean Spray and Mitsubishi. Soon after, Penny Marshall, the casting director at Paramount Pictures, signed him and his siblings. Phoenix performed as an audience warm-up act alongside his sister Rain on the program “Real Kids.”
With his role as young scientist Wolfgang Müller in Joe Dante’s science-fantasy movie “Explorers,” Phoenix made his feature film debut in 1985.
The following year, he played Chris Chambers, one of four boyhood best friends in 1959 Oregon who embark on an odyssey to recover a boy’s dead body, in Rob Reiner’s coming-of-age movie “Stand by Me.”
He starred alongside Wil Wheaton, Corey Feldman, and Jerry O’Connell in the well-received movie. Phoenix performed the role of the character’s son in Peter Weir’s “The Mosquito Coast” later in 1986.
The coming-of-age dramedy “A Night in the Life of Jimmy Reardon,” the suspenseful “Little Nikita,” and the drama “Running on Empty” were the three movies in which Phoenix starred in 1988.
He received an Academy Award nomination for Best Supporting Actor for his portrayal of the older son of a fleeing countercultural family in the most recent movie.
With the popular action-adventure sequel “Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade,” which he co-starred in with Harrison Ford as the eponymous character, Phoenix brought an end to the 1980s.
Phoenix played the title character in the black comedy “I Love You to Death,” which also starred Kevin Kline, Keanu Reeves, Joan Plowright, and Tracey Ullman.
The critically praised 1991 coming-of-age drama “Dogfight” featured him alongside Lili Taylor. In the same year, he collaborated once more with Keanu Reeves on “My Own Private Idaho,” a pivotal work in the history of New Queer Cinema, in which he portrayed street hustler Mikey Waters. P
hoenix won the Volpi Cup for Best Actor at the Venice Film Festival and the Independent Spirit Award for Best Male Lead for one of the most acclaimed performances of his career in the movie.
Then came “Sneakers,” a thriller, and “The Thing Called Love,” a comedy, the last movie he finished before passing away. The posthumous releases of two more movies include “Silent Tongue” by Sam Shepard and “Dark Blood” by George Sluizer.
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River Phoenix was an American actor, activist and musician who had a net worth of $5 million at the time of his death in 1993.
During the production of The Mosquito Coast in February 1986, Phoenix and Martha Plimpton started dating. Despite having met a year earlier, they didn’t get along at first.
Before their relationship ended in June 1989 as a result of Phoenix’s drug addiction, they also acted together in the 1988 movie Running on Empty. They remained close friends right up to his passing.
Phoenix allegedly engaged in drug use with Red Hot Chili Peppers guitarist John Frusciante in late October 1993.
The two had not slept for days due to their heavy heroin and cocaine use. During this period, Phoenix went to the Viper Room nightclub in West Hollywood to perform with the band P.
During the concert, he let his bandmates know that he wasn’t feeling well, but he refused to be brought home. Later, Samantha Mathis, Phoenix’s girlfriend, discovered him having a seizure on the pavement outside.
He was taken to the hospital by paramedics as they arrived, where he was later declared dead on October 31 at the age of 23. At the Phoenix family ranch in Micanopy, Florida, his ashes were dispersed.
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