Even though he only has two dozen credits on his acting resume, River Phoenix became a legend in a very short time. From an eclectic childhood that involved a name change (his family’s original last name was Bottom), living in South America, and moving to Los Angeles, he made his acting debut at the age of 12 in the television adventure series Seven Brides for Seven Brothers, starring as Guthrie McFadden from 1982-1983. He did an ABC Afterschool Special about dyslexia, and starred as Robert Kennedy Jr. in the mini-series Robert Kennedy and His Times (1985). The big screen, and the world, fell in love with River when he played Chris Chambers in Rob Reiner’s coming-of-age drama, Stand By Me (1986). He played Harrison Ford’s son, Charlie, in The Mosquito Coast (1986), and eventually played the younger version of Ford’s Indiana Jones in Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade (1989). In between the two, he grabbed an Oscar nomination for his role as Danny Pope in Sidney Lumet’s Running on Empty (1988). Other notable roles included Jeff Grant in Little Nikita (1988) with Sidney Poitier, playing Devo in I Love You To Death (1990) with Kevin Kline, Eddie Birdlace in Dog Fight (1991), Mike Waters in the Gus Van Sant drama My Own Private Idaho (1991) with Keanu Reeves (this is where you can see River’s trademark flop of blonde hair and his naked, toned torso), Carl in Sneakers(1992) with Robert Redford, and James Wright in Peter Bogdanovich’s The Thing Called Love (1993), a quirky and sassy film with Dermot Mulroney and Sandra Bullock that showed off River’s musical talents. And River did have musical talent, performing in a band called Alek’s Attic. In fact, he was performing the night of Halloween in 1993 at The Viper Room. After a lethal cocktail of cocaine and morphine that stopped his heart, he died in front of the club. Gone too soon, he was only 23.
