Rise Like a
Phoenix
Joaquin Phoenix steps
out from behind the shadow of his celebrated older
brother to make his own mark onscreen. Phoenix Rising
With Return to
Paradise, Joaquin Phoenix escapes his brother River's
shadow. For his role as an American facing death in a
Malaysian prison in the just-released Return to Paradise,
Joaquin Phoenix showed up gaunt as a ghost on the set
last fall. Director Joseph Ruben -- hoping to shed a few
pounds himself -- asked the actor for dieting advice. "Just stop
eating," Phoenix
replied. And when director James Gray asked Phoenix to
emote explosively during a take for next year's film The
Yards, Phoenix, says Gray, "went to the side of the
room and banged his head into a piece of oak on the wall,
and he got a huge welt." Phoenix, it seems, will
take his lumps for a role -- but there are limits, as
David Dobkin discovered when directing Phoe- nix in a
fishing scene for next month's film Clay Pigeons. The
actor, who like his late brother River is a strict vege-
tarian, told Dobkin, "I'll do anything except put
the fish on the hook." Phoenix, 23, is himself a bit like the one
that got away. A former child actor, Joaquin took a break
when he was about 15 to search his soul and travel
through Central America. "I was young enough that I
wanted to explore ... to grow," he says. He returned to the screen in
1991's Walking the Dog. Two years later he was still
looking for a script that moved him when River died of a
drug overdose. After the tragedy, Joaquin finally found a
character that interested him, resurfacing as Nicole
Kidman's teen lover turned murderer in the 1995 hit To
Die For. He got good notices, and in 1997 he got
something else: He won Liv Tyler's heart in Inventing the
Abbotts, and in real life, too. "Liv's a little shy,
and he just sweeps her off her feet and takes care of
her," says Liv's sister Mia. "I could totally
see them getting married."
Screen success aside,
Phoenix defies comparison with his reckless brother. At
restaurants and parties, Joaquin drinks rarely and has no
interest in drugs. And his dark, brooding good looks
suggest "a kind of smoldering intelligence that
almost goes back to Steve McQueen," says Bonnie
Palef, who directed him in Walking the Dog. "When
you watch him act, his pores are so wide open," says
Joel Schumacher, who directed Phoenix in the
upcoming 8mm. "He's just naked in front of
you." Martha Plimpton, who was River's girlfriend
and has known Joaquin since he was 11, says, "He was
always really physical and really emotional." The
family was close-knit, if loosely tethered. Joaquin
was born in Puerto Rico in 1974, the second son of John,
51, and Arlyn, 53, missionaries for the Children of God
religious group. Joaquin, River and their sisters --
actress Rain, 25; Liberty, 22, a full-time mother; and
actress Summer, 20 -- traveled nomadically from Venezuela
to Oregon.
"I
felt most at home in our motor home," Phoenix told Premiere last year.
These days he prefers to cruise around Los Angeles in his
banana-yellow '72 Pontiac LeMans.
In 1983, Joaquin (who
called himself Leaf from 6 to about 16) landed his first
TV part (with River) in the series Seven Brides for Seven
Brothers and by 1989 was portraying a troubled teen in
Parenthood. Joaquin's most searing real-life scene was
his 911 call on Halloween five years ago as his brother
lay dying outside an L.A. nightclub. "I've come
nearer acceptance -- I wouldn't say understanding,
because it's some- thing I'll never understand --
but just an acceptance of River's death," he told Movieline in March. Now
Hollywood is learning to accept the younger brother.
Director Dobkin says he recently called Phoenix about a
part as a bullfighter. "Absolutely not!" the actor replied. "The only way
I'll do it is if the bull wins and kills me in the
end."
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