In 1972, the Bottoms took their lives in a new direction, joining the Children of God religious movement. They named their son after the river of life in Hermann Hesse’s book Siddhartha. The couple followed a bohemian lifestyle, moving around a lot with their infant son. He was born on a farm where his parents, John Lee Bottom and Arlyn Dunetz, were working. Considered one of the most talented actors of his generation, River Phoenix had his promising career cut short by his premature death in 1993. Early Lifeīorn River Jude Bottom on August 23, 1970, in Madras, Oregon. Phoenix died of a drug overdose outside West Hollywood's Viper Room in 1993. He earned an Academy Award nomination for Sydney Lumet's Running on Empty, and also starred as the young Indy in Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade. For all of his seeming self-assuredness, in that moment, you see Chris as the child that he is, and how desperate he is for someone to lean on.River Phoenix was an American actor who had his breakthrough film role in Stand by Me, based on the novella by Stephen King. In arguably the film's most affecting scene, Chris breaks down as he admits to the unbearable pressure of being known as an irredeemable brat who's going nowhere in life beyond his own doom. Beneath that cocky demeanour, however, is a damaged kid seen by his small town as tainted goods thanks to his troubled family. Even as a kid, Phoenix had the aura of maturity around him that elevated him beyond his cutesy tween contemporaries. He takes charge in a way that his friends instantly agree with, perhaps because he just seems so much more mature than they are. With short hair and a baby Brando-esque sneer, complete with a pack of cigarettes rolled up in his t-shirt arm, he commanded attention. As Chris Chambers, the de facto leader of the group, he is instantly magnetic, an ideal display of the talent that made the teenager a star. Nowadays, it's not tough to see why so many people seem eager to hold up Stand By Me as a kind of cinematic confession from a young Phoenix. Which way did River fall?" After his death, his ardent veganism and environmentalist activism were spun as simultaneously godlike and a symbol of hypocrisy: how could Hollywood's most famous earth child die of a drug overdose? Jesus, Hamlet, and Hitler didn't fare as well. A Movieline journalist wondered if "the poor kid" Phoenix had been "raised by the Keebler elves or just domineering parents masquerading as flower children? Jimmy Connors, Brooke Shields, and Patti Davis survived domineering parents. His hippie nature was often mocked, such as during an interview on Donahue when the very mention of his siblings' names made the audience guffaw with laughter. Reiner's warmly encouraging stance, however, was a rare one in the media cycle. A 1986 interview from People heralded the teenager as "an independent spirit" free of slick styling or training, while Rob Reiner said that his parents "have somehow managed to maintain what was pure and good about the '60s morality and make it work." The story of his unusual upbringing was as inescapable in interviews as description of his prodigious acting skills. Where the child stars of old were impeccably polished dolls under the thumb of the studio system and tap-dancing for their lives, the Phoenix kids were unruly hippies of unreal talent, plucked from nowhere and shoved into the spotlight. From his earliest introduction in Hollywood, Phoenix was defined as something of a curiosity. Of course, it's not as though these compromising perspectives weren't present when he was alive either.
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