River Jude Phoenix (né Bottom; August 23, 1970 – October 31, 1993) was an American actor and musician.

Phoenix grew up in an itinerant family, as the older brother of Rain Phoenix, Joaquin Phoenix, Liberty Phoenix, and Summer Phoenix. He had no formal schooling, but showed an instinctive talent for the guitar. He began his acting career at age 10 in television commercials.[2] He starred in the science fiction adventure film Explorers (1985) and had his first notable role in 1986's Stand by Me, a coming-of-age film based on the novella The Body by Stephen King. Phoenix made a transition into more adult-oriented roles with Running on Empty (1988), playing Danny Pope, the son of fugitive parents in a well-received performance that earned him a nomination for an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor (at age 18, he became the sixth-youngest nominee in the category), and My Own Private Idaho (1991), playing Michael Waters, a gay hustler in search of his estranged mother. For his performance in the latter, Phoenix garnered enormous praise and won a Volpi Cup for Best Actor at the 1991 Venice Film Festival as well as Independent Spirit Award for Best Male Lead and National Society of Film Critics Award for Best Actor, becoming the second-youngest winner of the former.

Phoenix died at the age of 23 from combined drug intoxication in West Hollywood in the early hours of Halloween, 1993, having overdosed on cocaine and heroin (a mixture commonly known as speedball) at The Viper Room.

Early life

Phoenix was born on August 23, 1970, in Madras, Oregon, the first child of Arlyn Dunetz and John Lee Bottom. Phoenix's parents named him after the river of life from the Hermann Hesse novel Siddhartha, and he received his middle name from the Beatles' song "Hey Jude". In an interview with People, Phoenix described his parents as "hippieish". His mother 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, of English, German, and French ancestry. In 1968, Phoenix's mother travelled across the United States. While hitchhiking in California she met John Lee Bottom. They married on September 13, 1969, less than a year after meeting.

Phoenix's family moved cross country when he was very young. Phoenix has stated that they lived in a "desperate situation." Phoenix often played guitar while he and his sister sang on street corners for money and food to support their ever-growing family. Phoenix never attended formal school. Screenwriter Naomi Foner later commented, "He was totally, totally without education. I mean, he could read and write, and he had an appetite for it, but he had no deep roots into any kind of sense of history or literature." George Sluizer claimed Phoenix was dyslexic.

Activism

Phoenix was a dedicated animal rights and environmental activist. He was a vegan from the age of seven. He was a prominent spokesperson for PETA and won their Humanitarian Award in 1992 for his fund-raising efforts. His first girlfriend Martha Plimpton recalled: "Once when we were fifteen, River and I went out for a fancy dinner in Manhattan, and I ordered soft-shell crabs. He left the restaurant and walked around on Park Avenue, crying. I went out and he said, 'I love you so much, why? ... ' He had such pain that I was eating an animal, that he hadn't impressed on me what was right."

In 1990, Phoenix wrote an environmental awareness essay about Earth Day targeted at his young fan base, which was printed in Seventeen magazine. He financially aided a great many environmental and humanitarian organizations, and bought 800 acres (320 ha) of endangered rainforest in Costa Rica. As well as giving speeches at rallies for various groups, Phoenix and his band often played environmental benefits for well-known charities as well as local ones in the Gainesville, Florida area.

He campaigned for Bill Clinton in the 1992 US presidential election.

Personal life

In February 1986, during the filming of The Mosquito Coast, Phoenix began a romance with his co-star Martha Plimpton. They had met a year earlier but initially disliked one another.[better source needed] They also co-starred in the 1988 film Running on Empty before the relationship ended in June 1989 due to Phoenix's drug use. The two maintained a close friendship until his death. Plimpton later stated, "When we split up, a lot of it was that I had learned that screaming, fighting, and begging wasn't going to change him. He had to change himself, and he didn't want to yet."

A Roman a clef novel Pink by director Gus Van Sant asserts that Phoenix was not a regular drug user but only an occasional one, and that the actor had a more serious problem with alcohol. Phoenix had always tried to hide his addictions because he feared that they might ruin his career as they did his relationship with Plimpton.

For the last year of his life, in 1993, he dated his The Thing Called Love co-star Samantha Mathis. Mathis was with Phoenix on the night he died.

Death

In late October 1993, Phoenix had returned to Los Angeles for one day after flying back from one week in New Mexico. Before that, he had spent six to seven weeks in Utah to complete the three weeks of interior shots left on his last project, Dark Blood. The film was finally completed in 2012.

In his book Running with Monsters Bob Forrest wrote that Phoenix spent the days preceding his death on a drug binge with John Frusciante from the Red Hot Chili Peppers. Phoenix and John Frusciante were consuming cocaine and heroin and had not slept for several days.

On the evening of October 30, 1993, River arrived at The Viper Room, a Hollywood nightclub partly owned by Johnny Depp, with his girlfriend Samantha Mathis and Phoenix's brother Joaquin and sister Rain. Phoenix was to perform with the band P. The band featured Phoenix's friends Flea and John Frusciante from the Red Hot Chili Peppers, Gibby Haynes of the Butthole Surfers, Al Jourgensen of Ministry, and Depp.

According to Bob Forrest, during the performance by P, Phoenix tapped him on the shoulder to tell him he was not feeling well and that he thought he had overdosed. Forrest said to Phoenix that he did not think that he was overdosing because he could stand and talk. Nonetheless, he offered to take Phoenix home, but Phoenix declined, saying he was feeling better. A few moments later, a commotion erupted in the club and Forrest went outside to find Mathis screaming as Phoenix was lying on the sidewalk having convulsions. Unable to determine whether Phoenix was breathing, Joaquin called 911. Rain proceeded to give Phoenix mouth-to-mouth resuscitation.

According to Gibby Haynes, the band was performing their song "Michael Stipe" while Phoenix was outside the venue having seizures on the sidewalk. When the news filtered through the club, Flea left the stage and rushed outside. By that time, paramedics had arrived on the scene and found Phoenix turning cyanotic, suffering from cardiac arrest, asystolic. They administered medication in an attempt to restart his heart.

When the ambulance arrived, Phoenix was still alive and Flea accompanied him to Cedars-Sinai Medical Center. Attempts to resuscitate Phoenix at the hospital were unsuccessful. He was pronounced dead at 1:51 a.m. PDT on the morning of October 31, 1993, aged 23.

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