Joaquin Phoenix's Tragic True Life Story
The following article contains discussions of alcoholism, drug usage, cults, and sexual harassment.
Joaquin Phoenix is currently one of Hollywood's most interesting working actors, if not one of the more interesting actors to ever grace the screen. If there is one thing that he can't ever be accused of, it's taking a by-the-numbers approach to his career. He has managed to be a household name despite seldom starring in big-budget, major studio fare — and even when he does, it never feels like a phoned-in performance done for the paycheck. Whether it's playing real-life figures like Napoleon, iconic fictional characters like the Joker, or creating entirely new personas from scratch, Phoenix seems to go out of his way to choose challenging roles and nails them every single time.
As it tends to go with people of such immense talent and creativity, Phoenix has also had quite a fascinating life. Unfortunately, much of that life has been marred by tragedy, including one particular event that almost made him quit the industry and permanently retreat from the public eye altogether. From spending part of his childhood in a literal cult to losing multiple loved ones in especially heartbreaking ways, Phoenix certainly has plenty to draw from when portraying the dark, tortured, complicated characters he plays so well.
He was born into a controversial religious cult
No judgment, but it's safe to assume that people who name their children River, Rain, Joaquin, Liberty, and Summer have a unique outlook on life. It also just smacks of two people who entered adulthood in the 1960s and fully embraced the dreamy, free-spirited vibes of the era. Eventually, the spiritual journey of John Lee and Arlyn Bottom brought them and their first two children — son River and daughter Rain — to join a burgeoning religious movement known as the Children of God.
The still-growing family was living in one of the Children of God communes in Puerto Rico when they welcomed their third child, Joaquin. However, John Lee and Arlyn decided that they needed to get out of the group once they learned of its use of a controversial practice called flirty fishing — which is when a cult enlists its female members to seduce and even sleep with men outside of the group to entice them to join. Given that the Bottoms had two daughters at that point who could've eventually been used for that practice, they knew they had to escape, and did so when Joaquin was 3 years old. Actor Rose McGowan also spent part of her childhood in a Children of God commune. The group's founder, David Berg, was later accused of rampant sexual misconduct and child sexual abuse, including by his own daughters and granddaughters, but he died in 1994 before he was ever formally charged with any crimes.
If you or someone you know may be the victim of child abuse, please contact the Childhelp National Child Abuse Hotline at 1-800-4-A-Child (1-800-422-4453) or contact their live chat services.
He spent his third birthday as a freight ship stowaway
Any question as to whether Children of God was simply a religious group or an actual cult is settled in part by the Bottom clan needing to actually flee from it. The family — which was about to grow by another member, as Joaquin Phoenix's mother was pregnant with Summer at the time — had to leave everything behind at the commune and didn't have any money to get back to the United States from Venezuela, where they had been living at that time.
They ended up finding a cargo ship that allowed them to ride for free as stowaways. As it happened, the ship was transporting Tonka trucks, and the crew gave one to young Joaquin as a gift — his third birthday came during that journey. They also made him a cake, which Joaquin remembers as being the first real cake he had ever eaten. While the kind crew did their best to make Joaquin's birthday special, and the family was presumably on the way to a better life, the circumstances were hardly ideal for such a young child. To make things worse, Joaquin and his siblings had to witness the crew catching fish and killing them in an extremely brutal fashion, which led to Joaquin's decision to become a lifelong vegan.
His family endured years of significant financial hardship
In an interview with Time, Joaquin Phoenix described his family's situation after leaving the cult thusly: "We were straight-up dirt poor, we had nothing." Prior to hopping aboard the cargo ship to head to the States, the Bottoms struggled under crushing poverty for a time — they at one point were living in a rat-infested slum in Venezuela, and at another time, the entire family had to cram together in a single room of someone else's house. Eventually, the Bottoms set sail for the United States and arrived in Florida, where they started a new life. To commemorate the milestone, they changed their last name to Phoenix, likely due to the association of the bird as a symbol of rising from the metaphorical ashes and being reborn.
With River and Rain having already exhibited a knack for performing when they used to sing and dance on the street to promote Children of God, the family decided to cultivate that talent by relocating to Los Angeles. The Phoenix kids — including Joaquin — busked on the streets of L.A. for money, and eventually Joaquin began to book acting gigs. His earliest screen credit is a 1982 episode of the TV series "Seven Brides for Seven Brothers" when he was 8 years old, during the period he was going by his self-appointed new name: Leaf Phoenix. By 1991, he began using Joaquin again, both professionally and personally.
His father was allegedly a heavy drinker
While Arlyn Phoenix — who now goes by Heart Phoenix — has remained a prominent fixture in the public lives of Joaquin Phoenix and his siblings, John Lee Bottom seemed to prefer to stay out of the public eye. There is almost nothing in the way of publicly available photographs of him other than a handful that were taken when all of the children were still young. While Joaquin and his siblings have spoken about their family, their upbringing, and their mother — who herself maintains a public life both with and apart from her children — in various interviews, John is usually mentioned briefly as part of overall stories but seldom in any greater detail than that.
On the whole, very little is known about the father of Joaquin Phoenix. A notable exception is in the Gavin Edwards book "Last Night at The Viper Room: River Phoenix and the Hollywood He Left Behind," which goes in-depth about River Phoenix and his tragic final days. Among the revelations claimed by the book are that John had issues with drinking, so much so that it was a source of ongoing tension between himself and River. If this is true, it would go a long way in explaining the apparent estrangement between John and his children, not to mention River's addiction issues and Joaquin's own eventual struggles with alcoholism.
If you or anyone you know needs help with addiction issues, help is available. Visit the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration website or contact SAMHSA's National Helpline at 1-800-662-HELP (4357).
The shocking death of River Phoenix
Though Joaquin Phoenix has long since carved his own prolific and respected career that puts his time in his brother's shadow in the distant rearview, it's still impossible to do any sort of deep dive into the actor's life and career without discussing River Phoenix. More specifically, River's death at age 23 from a drug overdose outside of the infamous L.A. nightclub The Viper Room. The talented young actor was cut down in his prime, and the tragedy also had a profound effect on River's younger brother, Joaquin.
Joaquin — as well as their sister, Rain — was with River the night that he died and had to witness the entire sad scene firsthand. Joaquin's harrowing 911 call to get River help was played repeatedly by the media for years after River died, forcing Joaquin to have to relive that horrible night over and over again. Reporters often showed little tact in questioning Joaquin about his brother's death, to the point that Joaquin not only quit acting but public life in general. Needless to say, Joaquin eventually returned to both acting and celebrityhood, but reporters still can't help but ask him details about the night he'd rather just forget.
If you or anyone you know needs help with addiction issues, help is available. Visit the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration website or contact SAMHSA's National Helpline at 1-800-662-HELP (4357).
He went through a dark period while making Walk the Line
While it's impossible to know for sure what vices Joaquin Phoenix did or didn't partake in during his early years as an actor, there isn't much evidence to suggest that he did anything to excess in those days. If he overindulged at all, he didn't show it or let it affect his life or career in any way that was obvious to the public. But that all changed in the mid-2000s, as he was working on the Johnny Cash biopic "Walk the Line."
Phoenix doesn't specify exactly what it was about that period or that film that caused him to become a heavy partyer. Did he disappear a little too much into playing Cash, who spent many years struggling with various addictions? Did it hit a little too close to home that Cash also lost a brother too young and under tragic circumstances, an event that tortured the legendary musician for much of his life? Whatever the reason, Phoenix told GQ of that period, "I was being an idiot, running around, drinking, trying to screw people, going to stupid clubs." After keeping things pretty low-key up to that point, Phoenix could no longer resist the allure of living the wild life of a famous actor — and it soon took a very serious turn.
A terrible car accident gave way to a rehab stint
It needs to be said upfront that, by all accounts, Joaquin Phoenix was not drinking or under the influence of any illicit substances when he flipped his car near L.A.'s Sunset Strip in 2006. It seems that the accident was the result of his brakes failing and causing him to collide with another driver — and in fact, Phoenix wasn't even cited by law enforcement and he and the other driver exchanged information and resolved things themselves without getting courts involved. While neither driver suffered any serious injuries, Phoenix still came uncomfortably close to losing his life that day.
The actor says he was surprisingly calm despite being in an overturned car that just flipped over after colliding with another vehicle. He was so calm, in fact, that he was about to light a cigarette as he waited for help to arrive — not realizing that gasoline was leaking from his vehicle and that the flame might have caused an explosion. Luckily, acclaimed German filmmaker Werner Herzog was passing by and saw Phoenix and warned him not to light up, effectively saving his life. Though drugs and alcohol weren't a factor in the crash, the experience still forced Phoenix to reevaluate his life, and he voluntarily checked himself into rehab shortly after.
The loss of his friend and acting hero, Heath Ledger
Despite the apparently negative effects that "Walk the Line" might have had on Joaquin Phoenix's personal life, the film proved to be a high point for the actor's career. He received widespread acclaim for his portrayal of celebrated country star Johnny Cash, including Best Actor nominations from several major associations. Fellow actor Heath Ledger was similarly having a huge year, seeing the biggest praise of his career up to that point for his role in 2005's "Brokeback Mountain."
Phoenix and Ledger kept bumping into each other at all those award ceremonies in 2006 — most of which they ended up losing to Philip Seymour Hoffman for his performance of the titular role in "Capote" — and became close friends as a result. Unfortunately, that friendship would prove short-lived. Ledger's tragic death was the result of an accidental prescription drug overdose just two years later. Ledger went on to posthumously receive his only Academy Award for his portrayal of the Joker in "The Dark Knight." A little over a decade later, Phoenix would play his own version of Batman's longtime adversary in 2019's "Joker" — which, as it happens, won Phoenix his first Oscar as well. Phoenix also won a SAG Award for the role, and during his acceptance speech, he praised Ledger's portrayal of the character and called Ledger his favorite actor.
If you or anyone you know needs help with addiction issues, help is available. Visit the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration website or contact SAMHSA's National Helpline at 1-800-662-HELP (4357).
Acting gives him extreme anxiety and makes him physically ill
Anyone who has seen Joaquin Phoenix in interviews or otherwise outside of an acting performance know that he seems uncomfortable in such situations. The actor describes himself as a shy person, a sentiment that has been echoed by many of the filmmakers he has worked for over the years. In fact, Phoenix has to do a lot of psyching himself up mentally any time he's about to start a new project — to the point of making himself physically ill.
Phoenix told GQ that, in the weeks leading up to beginning work on any new film he takes on, he feels crippling anxiety. This culminates in him being so anxious and nervous that he feels sick in the final days before shooting begins. Things don't get much better after that, with Phoenix explaining that his overworked nerves continue for several weeks into each shoot as well. He says that he sweats so much during that period that he has to wear pads under his arms to absorb it. Writer-director James Gray — who worked with Phoenix on "We Own the Night," "The Yards," "Two Lovers," and "The Immigrant" — not only backs all of that up but also reveals a time where he was with Phoenix backstage before a television appearance and Phoenix puked because he was so nervous.
The troubled end to his 20-year friendship with Casey Affleck
One of the strangest periods of Joaquin Phoenix's career was while he was promoting his mockumentary "I'm Still Here." Well, nobody knew at that time that he was doing so, and instead, they just thought the actor had lost it when he was going on talk shows in a full beard and claiming he was quitting acting to become a rapper. It all turned out to be a publicity stunt for the movie and was one big Andy Kaufman-esque put-on concocted by Phoenix and Casey Affleck, who directed and co-wrote "I'm Still Here."
The movie was a box office bomb and didn't impress critics or audiences. Even worse were the sexual misconduct accusations from two women who worked on the film, both against Affleck himself and against other members of the crew in Affleck's presence. The claims were ultimately settled out of court, and Affleck denied being directly involved in any misconduct and chose only to admit that there was rampant misbehavior on the set that he should've done more to curb as the director. Phoenix wasn't accused of any abuse. However, he and Affleck were actually brothers-in-law at the time, as Affleck was married to Summer Phoenix. On top of that, the two had been close friends for 20 years, first meeting in 1995 while working on the movie "To Die For." Affleck and Summer split in 2016, and according to Phoenix, he and Affleck haven't spoken in years.
If you or anyone you know has been a victim of sexual assault, help is available. Visit the Rape, Abuse & Incest National Network website or contact RAINN's National Helpline at 1-800-656-HOPE (4673).
He lost his father to cancer in 2015
As was previously mentioned, very little is known or has been said about Joaquin Phoenix's father, John Lee Bottom. Most attempts to do any sort of internet research on what the patriarch of the family that brought the world the River kids has been up to lead to conjecture and various claims that don't cite any reputable sources of information. And for the part of Joaquin and his sisters, most of their discussions of him in interviews are of their early life, when they were all still young children.
So little is known about John Lee Bottom that an interviewer asked Phoenix about what his father was up to despite John apparently having already passed away several years prior. During a 2019 interview with Vanity Fair, Phoenix was asked where his dad was living. Phoenix's dry and matter-of-fact response? "He lives in heaven." The revelation was so shocking — and Phoenix's delivery of the news so flat — that the interviewer didn't immediately register the response as meaning John had died. After some back and forth that involved Phoenix having a little dark fun with the interviewer's confusion, he finally confirmed that his father had in fact passed away from cancer in 2015. John had been living such a private life — and his children and family had discussed him so little — that the media had no idea that he died until Phoenix mentioned it in that interview.