Joaquin Phoenix credits River for his acting career

I was at the premiere tonight when he said it. He's brilliant as the Joker

I just saw a couple of leaked clips from The Joker on Twitter. It looks incredible, and I say that as someone that loathes comic book movies. He’s a phenomenal actor. x

Did River have a different father? All his siblings are dark and hook nosed.

Very likely as Children of God required women prostitute themselves.

No props to Arizona?

Are they the only two brothers to be nominated for Oscars in acting?

Can't think of any others.

So far they're the only ones.

God I loved River. I was 13 when he died. He was my first crush.

R6 The Barrymores

First according to Guinness.

R10 WOW, John was never nominated, those bastard people

I was thinking that Jeff and Beau Bridges would be the first brothers nominated for an Oscar, but Beau has never been nominated.

Joaquin is 44, never married, and has no children. Doesn't that automatically make him gay on DL?

He's getting an early jump on awards season, suddenly mentioning his long dead brother.

They had different dads. The Children of God is a sick cult. Kids and young women are encouraged to go out and ‘flirty fish’ prospective members. Incest is normal within the cult too. I grew up with a bunch of these freaks living in the house next door. Anyone remember the rumour that Joaquin had a kid with his sister?

r13 No, Leo, because he has messy ass relationships with women, and the rumors are about his sister.

He's only had two relationships with women that we know about, three if you want to count his sister.

So not bearding. Anyway, it's more than 2.

Isn’t he with Mara Rooney?

[quote]Isn’t he with Mara Rooney?

Yes.

He was BFF with Casey Affleck. How did he escape #Metoo?

John Barrymore was a major ham. There were hundreds of better actors than him.

Yay comic book movies are not only making gazillion dollars but are now winning Oscars, too!

What’s next? What can’t comic book movies do????

Can we vote for a comic book movie for president in 2020???

He seems insufferable. Sexy and a mess but pretentious as FUCK.

R13 Aren’t him and Rooney Mara engaged?

Joaquin would sometimes storm off set but never had the balls to it in front of De Niro.

[quote]“One last thing — somewhere here, I don’t know where, is a filthy dragon, and I want to rip its wings off and fasten a blanket and sleep with it forever,” Phoenix concluded “I love you. Thank you.”

Thoughts and prayers, Rooney!

Good grief! River looks more like his mother. I think they all had the same father. Why are you people all creeps.

River was not fair and his mother probably dyed his hair blond.

Joaquin walks out of an interview after being asked if Joker "might perversely end up inspiring exactly the kind of people it’s about, with potentially tragic results?”

r30 its sad because its inevitable.

What’s sad is that people want to bash art, because a bunch of maladjusted incels identity with a fictional character. It is not the responsibility of an actor, writer, director, etc., to coddle their audience, or even to inspire them, for better or worse. This is storytelling. That’s it.

If Americans are so concerned that a film will inspire incels to participate in mass shootings, then perhaps they should put their money where there mouths are, and demand legislation that bans all automatic weapons.

What are you going on about, R33? Nobody's bashing the art, it's bringing up a topic of the inevitable considering the current climate.

Dear interviewers, do not ask Joaquin about River.

But the topic of River remains sensitive. Not even Phillips, who became good friends with Phoenix over the course of making Joker, ever felt comfortable enough to bring it up. At one point, after I ask a question about the Viper Room incident, Phoenix says, “You’re such a great, decent human being. That sounds like I’m being sarcastic. I am.”

R24 Joaquin was too weird and too much of a fragile needy creep for Liv Tyler, who grew up around junkies & egomaniacal rockstars & ex-hippie operatives & sex freaks and also had a groupie Queen for a mother. That tells us all we have to know.

[quote] Anyone remember the rumour that Joaquin had a kid with his sister?

R15 I just fell back down a rabbit hole of reading about the Phoenix Family skeletons again and remembered this rumor thinking I was crazy, so I'm glad someone else can confirm it has been said before and wasn't just my imagination filling in blanks.

It's fascinating. If you search 'does Rain Phoenix have kids/any children' or 'is Rain Phoenix a mother' on any search engine, the results return many pages including her official IMDB profile detailing a son named Winter Phoenix - or alternatively Jonas Winter Phoenix - who was allegedly born February 7th 1993 (making said son 26 going on 27 years old, now) of a mysterious "past relationship" Rain had with an unnamed father. This man Winter/Jonas, if he exists, would have been born in secret when Rain was just 20 and starting her career which of course is not a good look for an aspiring waif ingenue songwriter whose imperilled family are famous yet still can't make ends meet. The early '90s was still a fairly unforgiving time for young unmarried mothers and for young female artists in the public eye, so it's perfectly believable that Rain could have got pregnant and aborted or could have taken 9 months off and quietly left a baby boy with a more stable safe family in obscurity (Gods know that would have been the most humane thing to do, and she's all about the power of humanitarianism apparently). If this supposed son was got by her dear younger brother as the rumors all agree is likely? Well, even more reason to keep it hush.

However, looking deeper at the same search results, the more obscure and more recent returns show threads & articles debunking this claim, saying that Rain has never had a child and that the story was just a salacious concoction of press and/or something one of the Phoenix siblings made up to spook their friends as part of druggy rambling monologues out in the Hollywood Hills. From my research there are no photos & images or active social media accounts available online showing a man in his 20s going by the name 'Jonas/Winter Phoenix' nor any pictures of a pregnant younger Rain, and there is no trace of official public documents backing up the mystery child story either. Even Wiki doesn't list a son for Rain, for what it's worth as a source (which admittedly is not a lot). Rain has never been seen with a younger boy who could plausibly be a son of this age, and yet she has been photographed with her nephews & nieces (Liberty's passel of kids) before - surely any son of hers would want to spend time and be seen with his cousins?

My conclusions run thus - a) Winter/Jonas was born to Rain (and possibly/probably Joaquin) then given up for adoption and today lives under a different name with a different family, hopefully clueless about his true parentage & origin, or b) Winter/Jonas was born to Rain (and possibly/probably Joaquin) and died very young or was aborted which is something the family don't like to bring up and tried to cover up, but they couldn't completely clear all trace about him, or c) Winter/Jonas never did exist, and the media or River made up the story out of spite (or maybe to spook her out of dating her brother?).

I'm so intrigued. I just want to know the truth.

Also, it didn't escape my notice that the name 'Jonas' is spelled a little similar to 'Joaquin', and that after the rain (!) & leaves (!) come down in the Fall, it is Winter(!)time...

Wasn't one of the Phoenix girls (the Jewish looking one) in the movie where a pre-nose job Ryan Gosling plays a Neo-Nazi that's actually Jewish?

[quote] I think this is the first time he's spoken about River in public.

Someone wants an Oscar!

Rain's middle name is Joan of Arc.

He's a Thomas Pynchon creation come to life.

R39 yet River was the Christian Martyr. Funny how that works out.

R28 Is right. River and Summer resemble their mother; Joaquin, Rain, and Liberty favor their father. I'm one of several siblings who don't all look alike, but once they meet our parents people know we're related. Also, River and Joaquin had the same jawline.

[quote]I think this is the first time he's spoken about River in public.

Well, there was this...

R10 Wow, I can't believe Guinness got it completely wrong. River's nomination was for Best Supporting Actor for RUNNING ON EMPTY (1988); Joaquin's first nod was Supporting, too, but for GLADIATOR (2000), but he had two additional ones for Best Actor for WALK THE LINE (2005) and THE MASTER (2012).

I'll always be grateful that since they got together, Rooney Mara stopped "acting"

R43 Oh, man, I too was also 13 when River died, but I remember all the hoopla surrounding his death. The press was particularly relentless with Joaquin because he was River's only brother and he had made the 911 call which was played ad nausea on all the news stations. The coverage got so bad that the family fled the country for nearly two years.

R13 LOL! It has often amused me how DL is stuck in the past in some ways. They want to be progressive, but still expect men to be married by 30 or else they're gay. Newsflash: not everyone is getting married these days. My older brother is 41, has never been married though he's had several relationships, but he is far from gay as I am far from straight.

"River's nomination was for Best Supporting Actor for RUNNING ON EMPTY..."

Just watched it last night and all I can say is he should have won. An amazingly touching performance and one of the best, most authentic teen love stories ever filmed. It almost felt too voyeuristic to watch River and Martha make out.

The only reason Joaquin has a career is because his far more attractive and vastly more talented brother died.

R4+ I've always found Joaquin more attractive than River. River was too ethereal and willowy for my tastes; Joaquin was more masculine and those glittering green eyes against that dark hair! Swoon!

Plus, River, whose passion was music, said that Joaquin was the far more talented one, acting-wise. Can you imagine River playing Commodus, Johnny Cash, Freddy Quell, and Joker? That's range!

That was for R49.

That's right. River just looks like his mother.

Joaquin looks nothing like his fair blonde mom, and exactly like his father.

I think their pr managers must have spun those raised in a cult stories a little too far. They don't look as wild as all that. They look like a normal family on vacation.

R53 By the time of that photo, they had long deserted the cult and were already acting on TV/commercials. The family left the Children of God (which was in Venezuela at the time) in 1977 when River was 7, Rain was 5, Joaquin was 3, and Liberty was 1. They returned to the US and settled for a bit in Florida where Summer was born in 1978. Later, they relocated to Los Angeles where the kids performed on the streets and were discovered by talent agent Iris Burton.

Seems a bit Jackson 5 ish.

R55 Mixed with CAPTAIN FANTASTIC.

Daddy Phoenix resembles Ted Bundy.

Mama Phoenix always struck me as Kris Jenner-ish and shady.

Have the parents ever worked? Poor kids having to dance on street corners for change like trained monkeys. No wonder River killed himself.

River admitted in an interview to being sexually abused by the Children of God cult. Add the pressures of fame and being the family breadwinner by the age of 16, and no wonder he ended up on hard drugs.

He's gonna be a daddy!

R60, Joaquin claimed in that Vanity Fair interview above that River lied and the parents quit the cult when they started pushing the idea of seducing people to get new members. Joaquin’s version is that the parents were idealists who were driven off by the idea of recruiting people with sex. Then they felt lost because they missed the cult. But they didn’t go back.

Who knows what the truth is, he sounds a bit unstable in the interview. Read it, it’s pretty good.

[quote] he sounds a bit unstable in the interview.

He sounds ‘a bit unstable’ all the time, and that’s putting it kindly.

The interview at the link below is the most calm and lucid I’ve seen him behave in fifteen years.