River Phoenix
Actor/Actriz
32
Movies
7
TV Shows
River Jude Phoenix (née Bottom; August 23, 1970 – October 31, 1993) was an American actor, musician, and activist.
Phoenix grew up in an itinerant family, as the oldest brother of Rain Phoenix, Joaquin Phoenix, Liberty Phoenix, and Summer Phoenix. He had no formal schooling, but he showed an instinctive talent for the guitar, and he played and sang on the streets for money. He began his acting career at age 10 in a handful of television commercials. He starred in the science fiction adventure film Explorers (1985) and had his breakthrough 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 fought heroin addiction and died at age 23 from combined drug intoxication in West Hollywood in the early hours of Halloween, 1993, after unknowingly ingesting cocaine and heroin (a mixture commonly known as a speedball) at The Viper Room.
As Actor/Actress
Family Ties
Eugene Forbes
Hotel
Indiana Jones 3: La Última Cruzada
Young Indy
Cuenta Conmigo
Chris Chambers
Los fisgones
Carl
Explorers
Wolfgang Müller
It's Your Move
Brian
Too Young to Die
Self (archive footage)
Seven Brides for Seven Brothers
Guthrie McFadden
Idaho: El camino de mis sueños
Mike Waters
Celebrity
Young Jeffie Crawford
Te amare hasta que te mate
Devo Nod
The Mosquito Coast
Charlie Fox
Timeless Heroes: Indiana Jones and Harrison Ford
Self (archive footage)
Robert Kennedy & His Times
Robert Kennedy Jr.
Little Nikita
Jeff Grant
Running on Empty
Danny Pope
Una cosa llamada amor
James Wright
Dogfight
Eddie Birdlace
A Night in the Life of Jimmy Reardon
Jimmy Reardon
Circle of Violence: A Family Drama
Chris Benfield
Indiana Jones: Making the Trilogy
Self (archive footage)
Dark Blood
Boy
Silent Tongue
Talbot Roe
Surviving
Philip Brogan
Walking the Tracks: The Summer of Stand by Me
Self (archive footage)
Backwards: The Riddle of Dyslexia
Brian Ellsworth
101 Most Shocking Moments in Entertainment
Self (archive footage)
Joaquin Phoenix — Schauspieler der Extreme
Self - Actor (archive footage)
My Own Private River
Michael "Mike" Waters (archive footage)