Biography

		Life Story
		Film Career

He was born Joaquin Rafael Bottom on the 28th of October, 1974, in San Juan, Puerto Rico. His family was there for a very specific reason. His mother, Arlyn Dunitz, a woman of Russian/Hungarian blood, had been a secretary in Manhattan and married to a computer operator. Come 1968, at age 24, she'd tired of her straight life and, in the spirit of the times, dumped her job and husband and took off for California, hitch-hiking her way across the USA. 

Close to the West Coast, she'd score a lift from one John Lee Bottom, a landscaper and furniture refinisher of Spanish/Irish descent, born in Fontana, Ca, and three years her junior. The couple discovered in each other a kindred spirit and decided to travel the States together in search of spiritual enlightenment. In 1970, while in Madras, Oregon, they'd have a son, River (River Bottom, can you believe it?). They'd join newly formed religious group The Children of God, moving to their base at Pikes Peak, just south of Denver, Colorado, giving up psychedelic drugs and becoming missionaries for the cause. They'd now cross the southern states, seeking converts, daughter Rain being born while they were in Crockett, Texas.

With John named archbishop to Venezuela and the West Indies, by 1974 they'd have relocated to Puerto Rico, where Joaquin was born. Quickly they'd move on to Venezuela where they'd spend a further two years (enough time for sister Liberty to arrive). Here John would support the family by doing yard-work for the rich, while River and Rain would sing and dance in the street for money, forming the basis of a successful (and ever-expanding) family performance troupe that would sing in children's hospitals and jails. 

However, there was darkness on the horizon and John and Arlyn saw it coming. David Berg, founder of the Children of God, by habit lived apart from his followers, communicating with them by what were known as Mo Letters, Berg also taking the name Moses David. But now, drunk on power and its erotic possibilities and hoping to attract rich coverts through sex, he was beginning to lose it, his pronouncements becoming ever more outrageous. 

So the Bottoms, with the help of a priest, hitched a ride on a freighter taking Tonka toys to Florida. They were just in time. By 1977, Berg had written supremely dodgy tracts on how women should happily go along with any man raping them, how incest was OK and how paedophilia was fine as long as the child in question was 7 or over. He'd later be investigated by the FBI and be accused of abuse by both his daughters, his daughter-in-law and two of his grand-daughters. Yet still the personal charisma that had attracted the Bottoms kept his flock together and, even after Berg's death in 1994, members of the Family International still believed he was leading them from beyond the grave.

Having enjoyed a fortunate and well-timed escape from the Children of God, the Bottoms would experience a further conversion aboard the freighter. When the crew pulled nets full of fish up onto the deck and killed them by smashing them against the timbers, River, Rain and Joaquin were horrified by the violence of the scene. Thus introduced to the brutality of the carnivores' food chain, they each swore off meat for life, John and Arlyn joining them in committed veganism. Young Joaquin would turn 3 onboard and clearly remembers the ship's cook baking him a cake.

In Florida, 1978 would see the final Bottom baby born, her name being Summer. In celebration of their new life away from the Children of God, the family had taken a new surname - Phoenix - and Joaquin had gone one step further, changing his first name, too. Annoyed that no one could pronounce it correctly (it's Wah-Keen) and jealous of his other siblings' funky monikers, he'd chosen to name himself Leaf. Unfortunately, this period would also see John badly damage his back, preventing him from continuing with the gardening jobs that were keeping food on the table. They'd always been poor, but now they were dirt-poor, too poor. Yet always they were amazingly optimistic. 

John and Arlyn had no real theatrical experience, but they'd always performed little skits for the kids, encouraged them to dance and sing, to invent and create and, with the family made so insular by the constant travel, they were all more than happy to perform with each other. And they were clearly good at it. So, convinced that her children would captivate the world, Arlyn entered River and Rain into local talent contests. 

They were noticed, newspaper articles were written about them and one of these was sent to Penny Marshall, then appearing in hit sit-com Laverne & Shirley (and later to direct Big and Awakenings). Marshall would pass on the word and the Bottoms were called by a Paramount executive who suggested they drop by if they were ever in Los Angeles. This was all the encouragement Arlyn needed. The family was packed into a 9-year-old station-wagon and drove right across the States in search of, not money, not stardom, but that elusive new life.

The family Phoenix would arrive in California when Leaf was 5. Initially, times were hard. The family would spend time living in old ice cream vans and UPS trucks. They rented a one-bedroom North Hollywood apartment where, with no kids allowed, the children would have to hide in a cupboard whenever the landlady came around. They'd move on every few months, either when the kids were discovered or the rent wasn't paid. 

Now a 5-piece, the kids would sing for money on the streets of Westwood, wearing matching gold K-Mart tank-tops and often covering Beatles songs. Eventually, though, matters would improve. Arlyn would score a job at NBC, while John, now back at work as a landscaper, would prove a wizard at finding cheap accommodation, finding the family a place right beside some government land. It was much like having a 100-acre backyard.

At NBC, Arlyn worked as secretary for casting director Joel Thurm. Thurm would introduce her to Iris Burton, a renowned agent for child actors, and Burton would be asked to act for the family, mostly because she was the only one who'd take on all five kids. She was also undeterred by the fact that no member of the family Phoenix would appear in ads for any aggressive corporation or anyone selling meat products, so McDonald's, Coca-Cola and a host of other lucrative possibilities were no-gos from the start.

Burton would prove a wise choice. By 1982 she'd scored River a regular part in a TV series based on the musical Seven Brides For Seven Brothers. With the family staying close to the set, when two extra kids were required for the Christmas episode it was cheap and easy to hire Leaf and Liberty Phoenix. Leaf would appear the next year in an episode of Mr Smith, concerning a talking orangutan who works as a political adviser in Washington, then would hitch another ride on his brother's coat-tails in 1984's Backwards: The Riddle Of Dyslexia. 

This was an ABC After School Special where River played a kid in Junior High who, when he starts writing backwards, is considered to be joking, lazy or slow. Leaf would play his younger brother and, such was the success of this informative drama, both he and River were nominated for Young Artist awards. Home-tutored in both academics and acting, the Phoenixes were clearly bubbling over with natural talent.

1984 would bring Leaf several more TV bit parts, in The Fall Guy, Hill Street Blues and, along with Summer, Murder She Wrote. Then, in 1985, he'd appear in the hard-hitting TV drama Kids Don't Tell, concerning the lifelong effects of child molestation, directed by Sam O'Steen, who'd earlier acted as editor on the weighty likes of The Graduate, Chinatown and Cool Hand Luke. Following these there'd be a meatier role in an episode of Alfred Hitchcock Presents where Phoenix would play a deaf rich boy who witnesses a murder then blackmails hit-man Robert Loggia. 

Unlike most of the series' episodes, which were straight remakes of Hitchcock's originals, this was a new story. Then there'd be the feel-good series of 1986, Morningstar/Eveningstar, where an orphanage is destroyed and the kids, including Leaf and Fred Savage, are sent to stay at a retirement home. With Scatman Crothers onboard, it couldn't help but be charming.

By 1986, the precociously gifted Leaf (who'd dropped out of High School in 9th Grade when asked to dissect a frog) was deemed ready for a major screen role. Spacecamp was set at a NASA camp for very bright kids, this year's intake including Lea Thompson, Kelly Preston and Tate Donovan. Also attending is Leaf, much younger than the others, and consequently feeling alienated. To salve his loneliness, he befriends a service robot (a machine remarkably similar to the tin star of the same year's Short Circuit) and inadvertently causes the team, along with teacher Kate Capshaw, to be fired into space. Can the youngsters get home without burning up on re-entry?

The time was certainly considered right for movies concerning space, American imaginations having been captured by the successful shuttle launch in 1981. Indeed, River Phoenix had made his Silver Screen debut in Joe Dante's space-based Explorers the year before Leaf's opening effort (Explorers also saw the debut of the young Ethan Hawke). 

However, unbeknownst to its makers, Spacecamp was doomed. Scheduled for release in early 1986 it suffered a promotional catastrophe when on January 28th the Challenger space shuttle exploded on take-off. No one was going to take to a light-hearted space romp after that.

For the Phoenix family, the misfortune of Spacecamp was more than balanced by River's current successes. He'd been a hit in Stand By Me, Rob Reiner's money-spinning take on a Stephen King story, then stepped up into the big leagues to work alongside Harrison Ford, Helen Mirren and Peter Weir in The Mosquito Coast. Leaf, meanwhile, was no slouch. 

The LA Times would make special mention of his performance in Russkies, where some Florida kids find a Russian sailor washed-up on the beach and overcome their Cold War conditioning to become his friends. Then there'd be the strange Secret Witness, where Leaf and Kellie Martin were kids pretending to be spies and stumbling upon a relationship between a divorced man and soon-to-be-divorced woman. Directed by Eric Laneauville (who'd earlier played a mugger in Death Wish) it was too voyeuristic to be a kids' film and too childish to be an adult drama. It was the kind of film only the French could pull off with any real style.

As had been and would be the case throughout his early years, the course of Leaf's life was now to be dictated by the actions of his family. River had risen to lead man status in A Night In The Life Of Jimmy Reardon, Little Nikita and Sidney Lumet's Running On Empty, the latter movie seeing him Oscar-nominated. He was big news and his parents felt his momentum was such that his career would not suffer if the family were to move back to Florida. 

This was not necessarily the case with the other siblings, and Leaf in particular was not keen to go back east. However, the decision was made less contentious when Leaf won a part in Ron Howard's Parenthood, then being shot at Universal's new studio in Orlando. Work-wise, 1989 would turn out to be a good year for the young actor. First, he'd be the main guest in an episode of Superboy, playing a genius friend of Clark Kent who causes chaos when, trying to impress a girl, he breaks into the computer system of a military submarine. 

Then there'd be Parenthood where he stood out amidst a superb ensemble cast including Steve Martin, Jason Robards and Mary Steenburgen, playing an awkward, alienated kid who disturbs his single mother Dianne Wiest with his discovery of porn and finds a surrogate father in his sister's dopey, drag-racing husband Keanu Reeves.

Family matters would now ensure that Leaf did not make another full-length feature for six years. First his parents split up (amicably, of course), with Arlyn looking after Rain, Liberty, Summer and, when he wasn't on-set, River. Leaf, meanwhile, would accompany his father on a two-year trip down to Mexico where his eyes would be furthered opened to the ways of the world, his cherry being popped by a Mexican maiden, and all that. 

Encouraged by River, he'd also take back his original name, Joaquin. Returning to the States, his only screen appearance would be in the short Walking The Dog wherein he robbed an elderly New York antiques dealer and turned the old fellow's life upside down. Much of his time he spent with River who, after the Oscar nomination had revealed himself to be an actor of rare ability in the moving Dogfight, My Own Private Idaho (with Joaquin's former co-star Keanu Reeves) and Sam Shepard's Silent Tongue.

Perhaps at this stage, in 1993, Joaquin was ready to return to acting. Tragically, any comeback was severely delayed when, on October 31st, River collapsed outside The Viper Rooms in Los Angeles. As he convulsed on the ground, struck down by an inadvertently lethal cocktail of drugs, it was a desperate Joaquin who called the emergency services from a nearby pay-phone. But his efforts were to no avail. River died that night, unleashing a media furore wild in its tastelessness. 

River was hailed as the new James Dean, the latest American icon to depart before his time. Tabloid photographers snapped him in his coffin, at the funeral shrieking girls were (only just) prevented from throwing themselves into the grave. Somehow, tapes of Joaquin's call for an ambulance were released and replayed endlessly on TV and radio. Everybody heard his anguished politeness as he dealt with the surly operator, everyone heard his panicked plea "You must get here. Please, you must get here".

Not only had he lost his brother, his best friend and his role model, the peculiarly sensitive Joaquin had also faced a barrage of ugliness and callousness the like of which few ever encounter. There was also the guilt that River had wanted to stay in and play some new songs to his brother that fateful night, but Joaquin had persuaded him to come out. That it took him only a year to regain his feet is testament to his own durability and the strength of his family. 

Deciding that acting was, indeed, his chosen path, he spent the latter part of 1994 wading through scripts, seeking an interesting role. This would eventually come courtesy of Gus Van Sant, who'd previously directed River in My Own Private Idaho. The part was in To Die For, a sharp satire written by Buck Henry and concerned with the growing importance of television and the nature of ambition in the late 20th Century. 

Here Nicole Kidman would star as a local TV weathergirl in New Hampshire who's set her sights on a career in the major networks. An obsessed sociopath, she realises that she'll be held back by hubbie Matt Dillon, a relaxed sort who dreams of drinking beer and fathering babies. So, when she gives a talk at a local school and manages to transfix white trash runt Joaquin, she seduces him and grooms him for murder. Kidman would be critically lauded for her efforts, but Phoenix matched her every step of the way, excelling as the clueless, tongue-tied slave to desire.

For a while Joaquin had been seeing a girl in New York named Acacia. However, his next project would bring both more plaudits and a new girlfriend in Liv Tyler (they'd be together for some three years). This was Inventing The Abbotts, a bitter-sweet coming-of-age tale set in the 1950s, where Joaquin and older brother Billy Crudup engage with the three daughters of the town bigwig, the girls being played by Tyler, Jennifer Connelly and Joanna Going. 

While Crudup struggles with the belief that the girls' father has stolen his own father's fortune, the more reticent Joaquin lusts after Connelly while his feelings grow for the younger, more innocent Tyler. Naturally, courage must be tested before love is found, as Phoenix gradually moves out of his brother's shadow.

The same year, 1997, would bring an altogether more showy role in Oliver Stone's noir thriller U-Turn. When Sean Penn's car breaks down in a small Arizona town he gets into serious trouble with the weirdo locals, particularly oddball couple Nick Nolte and Jennifer Lopez, each asking him to kill the other. There's bother, too, down at the diner where flirty Claire Danes comes onto to him, enraging her boyfriend Joaquin, a pumped-up, preening redneck with a monstrous quiff. Though Penn was fine as the harassed and abused interloper, such genre movies are usually most memorable for the their cast of crazies, U-Turn's being dominated by Phoenix and Billy Bob Thornton.

It was quickly becoming clear that Phoenix, still in his early twenties, was intent not upon stardom but upon widening his range as an actor. He moved on to Return To Paradise, a remake of the 1989 French hit Force Majeure. Here he, Vince Vaughn and David Conrad play young roustabouts hanging loose in Malaysia, enjoying the sun, the girls and the cheap hash. 

At the end of their holiday, Vaughn and Conrad to New York but Phoenix, planning to move on to a nature project in Borneo, is caught with the lads' leftover drugs and sentenced to death. Contacted by Phoenix's lawyer Anne Heche, Vaughn and Conrad now face an almighty poser. If they both return to Malaysia they face three years each. If only one returns he gets six years. If neither return Phoenix dies. In the midst of the dilemma, Joaquin would shine once again, his performance soaked in shock, bewilderment and fear.

He'd stay with Vaughn for the macabre comedy Clay Pigeons, produced by Ridley Scott. Here Phoenix, having an affair with his best friend's wife, finds the tables turned when the friend, devastated yet vengeful, kills himself but makes it look like Phoenix did it. In his attempts to escape suspicion, Joaquin, now tailed by FBI agent Janeane Garofalo and haunted by mysterious stranger Vaughn, only manages to make himself look like a serial murderer.

Another fine Phoenix turn would come in Joel Schumacher's 8mm. After accusations that he'd over-glossed his two Batman movies, the director was keen to get back to grimy basics and this he did, the film seeing Nicolas Cage as a PD hired to find out if a girl apparently butchered in a snuff movie is really dead. 

Thus Cage must descend into LA's porno underworld, Phoenix appearing as a tattooed, wisecracking sex shop desk-clerk who acts as his guide and a font of sleazy wisdom. Cage could not have wished for a better sidekick, the PVC-clad Phoenix managing to strut seedily but also, when things get heavy, exhibiting massive vulnerability and, eventually, human decency.

Phoenix would stay on the wrong side of the law for The Yards, where Mark Wahlberg, just released from chokey, would return home and find a job with Joaquin, the friend for whom he took the rap, now working for James Caan, whose company builds and maintains the trains of New York. But this is no office job - Phoenix runs a muscle squad, violently enforcing Caan's will and, after his first night out, Wahlberg finds himself fingered once again, this time for murder. 

So will Phoenix, misguided and manipulated by Caan, now take the rap for his buddy? The film was dark and thoroughly gloomy, but still a fine ensemble piece, with Phoenix holding his own against old stagers like Caan, Ellen Burstyn and Faye Dunaway, as well as young turks Wahlberg and Charlize Theron.

After the long-delayed The Yards, Joaquin's second release of 2000 was the infinitely more epic Gladiator, directed by his former producer Ridley Scott. Here he'd play the pivotal role of Commodus, who murders his father, Richard Harris's Emperor Marcus Aurelius, and destroys the life of his chosen heir, Russell Crowe's Maximus, thus setting Crowe on a long, blood-spattered journey to revenge. 

Crowe would win an Oscar for his efforts but Phoenix (nominated for both an Oscar and Golden Globe) would match him, making Commodus boyishly needy and desperate for affection but also bullying and dangerously sadistic. He was a classic villain with several stand-out one-liners but - exquisitely bored, regretfully murderous, possibly harbouring incestuous desire - he'd clearly made more of the part than was there on paper. 

Indeed, so complex were his ideas for the role that, according to Crowe, fear of failure overcame him at the outset of filming. Crowe would ask Harris how best to aid the suffering young thesp and received the inevitable Harris response: "Let's get him pissed". Many cans of Guinness later, Emperor Commodus was ready to rule.

Phoenix's final film of an extraordinary year, Quills, would see him as the Abbe du Coulmier, a young priest in charge of the asylum at Charenton, the final home of the Marquis de Sade. Geoffrey Rush would play the Marquis as a pervy genius, charismatically brilliant and a victim of the enemies of free speech. But the other characters were unusually well-rounded, too. 

Michael Caine was superb as the warden brought in to crush Sade, condemning him for his licentiousness but secretly enjoying similar forbidden pleasures. Phoenix, meanwhile, would be tortured by the same carnal desires but fight against them, staying true to his vow of celibacy while Kate Winslet, the object of his lust, falls into the grasping hands of the old lech de Sade.

Testing himself still further, Phoenix would move on to the more contemporary setting of the black comedy Buffalo Soldiers. Here he'd play a ne'er-do-well who, given the choice between joining the army and going to jail, becomes a King Rat figure on a US base in 1989 Germany. Crafty and elusive, he deals in everything from drugs to missiles, but comes unstuck when he falls for Anna Paquin, daughter of Scott Glenn, a straight-laced officer deteremined to clean up the camp. 

In typical Phoenix fashion, he did not seek to portray his man as a loveable rogue, rather as a scum-bag obsessed with personal gain. But this was not what caused Buffalo Soldiers to be held back for two years then to be given only a limited release, rather it was the fact that it premiered in Toronto just three days before 9/11, not the best time to be taking a dig at the US military. That it should be delayed again by the invasion of Iraq was ludicrously poor fortune.

Joaquin's next picture faced no danger of similar postponement, unless of course America had been attacked by aliens. This was Signs, his first film with M. Night Shyamalan. Here Mel Gibson would play a priest whose faith has been destroyed by the tragic death of his wife. Now he lives on a farm with his kids and kid brother Phoenix, a former Minor League baseball player, now a gas station attendant. 

As the world's media is sent into a frenzy by a series of unexplained events, something weird is happening on the farm, there's something out there in the corn, and Shyamalan gradually racks up the tension into a feeling of dread. Following the success of The Sixth Sense, it was another massive hit for the director who once again saw his thriller elevated by appropriately emotional turns from his leads.

Though he was now making a name for himself by lending credibility to big budget pictures with his impressive character studies, Phoenix was still willing to experiment and his next movie, It's All About Love, would see him working with Danish Dogme director Thomas Vinterberg, as well as reuniting with his U-Turn co-stars Claire Danes and Sean Penn. Set in New York in 2020, the film would see the world gone mad, with snow falling in summer, lonely people dropping dead and Africans no longer held down by gravity. 

Phoenix arrives in town to serve divorce papers on his ice-skating star wife Danes, but ends up joining her as she flees from the sinister Ice International Corporation and its ungodly cloning experiments. Meanwhile, Penn comments from on high as he flies a plane endlessly through the sky. It was a strange movie, roundly mocked at the Sundance festival and given no US release, but it was possessed of real imagination and an integrity seldom seen in modern cinema.

It was increasingly apparent that Phoenix, now notoriously intense in his work, was employing the same seriousness when choosing his roles. Even when simply lending his voice to a cartoon he made sure it was something different. In Brother Bear he'd play one of three Inuit siblings, one of whom is killed by a bear. Joaquin would take revenge on the creature but, as this is not permissible behaviour, he's turned into a bear himself and now must face the last brother, also out for vengeance.

2004 would bring a welter of Phoenix releases, typically varied in tone. First he'd reunite with M. Night Shyamalan for The Village, set in the 1890s where an upright community is threatened by hostile beasts living in the neighbouring forest. It was supremely sombre stuff, and even a little silly in its concept but, as is usual for him, Shyamalan used an excellent cast to hold the audience firm, Phoenix playing a strong-willed young man who first asks the council if he may explore the forest and then must save girlfriend Bryce Dallas Howard from the things in the woods. Though not as successful as Signs, it was another $100 million hit, Phoenix's fourth, after Signs, Parenthood and Gladiator.

Joaquin's next movie would be another hit, but far more prestigious in critical terms. This was Hotel Rwanda, which saw him appearing alongside Don Cheadle and his former U-Turn co-star Nick Nolte. Here Cheadle would play a hotel manager caught up in the 1994 genocide in Rwanda, using bribery, flattery and deception to save the lives of hundreds of otherwise doomed Tutsis. 

Phoenix would take a small but important role as a journalist who has footage of the massacres but is aware that few in the First World will give a damn. As he leaves the hotel for safer surrounds, his shame is heightened by an employee holding an umbrella over his head, protecting rich whites as they are not protecting the people of Rwanda.

Very different would be Joaquin's final release of 2004, Ladder 49. Ostensibly an action movie, it would begin with firefighter Phoenix saving a man from a burning warehouse then being buried under debris as an explosion rocks the building. We think we're just going to be dealing with a predictable race against time as chief John Travolta attempts a rescue, but then the film changes tack, in flashback covering Phoenix's training, his romance with and marriage to Jacinda Barrett, his relationship with mentor Travolta, all the while exploring the reasons why anyone would ever take on such a dangerous job.

Though he entered the public consciousness as Commodus, Phoenix was still not widely accepted as the top-line actor he'd become. This would change with the 2005 release of Walk The Line, a biopic of Johnny Cash, following him from his harsh upbringing on an Arkansas cotton farm, through his discovery of his musical persona and on into a battle against drink, drugs and various other demons. Joaquin would deliver a masterful performance, singing Cash's songs with true style and engaging in fascinating relationships with Reese Witherspoon (as wife June Carter) and his drunken, disparaging father, played by Robert Patrick (also his co-star in Ladder 49). 

Phoenix and Witherspoon would both be Oscar nominated for their efforts, and both win Golden Globes. Back in 2001, before Walk The Line had been mentioned to him, Joaquin had actually met Cash, having been invited along when James Gray, director of The Yards, was filming Cash recording. Cash had invited Phoenix to dinner and expressed a real interest in the actor's work, even quoting his lines from Gladiator. Unsurprisingly they were the lines Commodus uses to taunt Maximus about the crucifixion of his son and the rape of his wife.

After Walk The Line, Phoenix would repay Gray by starring in his next picture, We Own The Night. This would concern the Russian mafia in New York and a plan to assassinate any cops who threaten their business, Joaquin playing a nightclub manager who must act when he discovers his father and brother are on the hit-list.

Where Joaquin Phoenix goes next is open to question. As a keen spokesman for PETA (People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals) he will certainly take his vegan beliefs to a wider audience. Having directed the Tired Of Being Sorry video for the band Ringside, he may well move towards film production. It's to be hoped, though, that, having become a Montgomery Clift for this age - brilliant, troubled, always believable - he continues to concentrate on acting for many years to come. ~ Dominic wills

All original content , Copyright ©2004-2006 WestLord.com , All Rights Reserved