ACTIVIST
River was a dedicated animal rights, environmental and political activist. He was a prominent spokesperson for PETA and won their Humanitarian Award in 1992 for his fund-raising efforts.
For Earth Day 1990, River wrote an environmental awareness essay targeted at his young fanbase, which was printed in Seventeen magazine (see below). He was also a vegan, and had been since the age of 8.
He financially aided a great many environmental and humanitarian organisations, and once bought 800 acres of endangered rainforest in Costa Rica.
As well as giving speeches at rallies for various groups, River and his band often played environmental benefits for well-known charities, as well as local ones in his home town of Gainesville, Florida.
For Earth Day 1990, River wrote an environmental awareness essay targeted at his young fanbase, which was printed in Seventeen magazine (see below). He was also a vegan, and had been since the age of 8.
He financially aided a great many environmental and humanitarian organisations, and once bought 800 acres of endangered rainforest in Costa Rica.
As well as giving speeches at rallies for various groups, River and his band often played environmental benefits for well-known charities, as well as local ones in his home town of Gainesville, Florida.
"When I was old enough to realise that all meat was killed, I saw it as an irrational way of using our power, to take a weaker thing and mutilate it. It was like the way bullies would take control of younger kids in the schoolyard."
River Phoenix
RIVER PHOENIX RANKS ACTING BELOW ANIMAL RIGHTS AND MUSIC
New York Times - 05 January 1989 - By Aljean Harmetz
When River Phoenix learned he had just won the National Board of Review's award as best supporting actor of 1988 for his performance in ''Running on Empty,'' his first response was to ask what the society was.
A few months past his 18th birthday, Mr. Phoenix is not yet into glittering prizes. If the awards ceremony conflicts with an anti-fur concert at which he has agreed to play his guitar, the popular young actor says he will keep his commitment to the animal-rights group. He does not wear animal skin on his back, at his waist or, most of the time, on his feet. And he has been a vegetarian since he was 8 years old.
During his most recent trip to Hollywood from his home in Florida, he picked at some vegetables mixed with tofu and talked about the immorality of eating meat.
''When I was old enough to realize all meat was killed, I saw it as an irrational way of using our power, to take a weaker thing and mutilate it,'' he said. ''It was like the way bullies would take control of younger kids in the schoolyard.''
ENVIABLE REVIEWS
As Danny Pope, who has spent 15 years hiding behind false identities in ''Running on Empty'' and who must choose between betraying his parents or his future, Mr. Phoenix earned enviable reviews, as well as a nomination today as best supporting actor for the Golden Globes given out by the Hollywood Foreign Press Association. But the film did poorly at the box office last fall, selling less than $3 million worth of tickets. In a quest for an Academy Award nomination for Mr. Phoenix, Warner Brothers re-released the movie at a theater in Los Angeles a few weeks ago and intends to reopen in New York in the middle of this month.
Mr. Phoenix's reviews have been glowing since his first appearance as the sturdy 12-year-old leader of four young boys searching for the body of a dead boy in ''Stand by Me.'' He even got away relatively unscathed when critics mauled ''Little Nikita,'' in which he played the all-American son of Russian spies, and ''The Mosquito Coast,'' in which he played Harrison Ford's son.
The young actor has just finished a cameo role in Steven Spielberg's new movie, ''Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade,'' in which he plays Jones as a teen-age daredevil, ''with lots of mad escapes.'' He said he did not mimic Mr. Ford's Indiana Jones, but ''used him as a reference.''
''When Indiana Jones is in trouble,'' Mr. Phoenix said, ''he'll give a real laugh and dart his eyes to the right or left and freeze a smile, a perpetual smirk.''
The new movie will reveal the origins of Jones's phobia about snakes. ''I had to do a scene where I'm at the bottom of a crate in a circus reptile car and I have to deal with thousands of snakes,'' Mr. Phoenix said.
BUILT IN BAROMETER
Sidney Lumet, the director of ''Running on Empty,'' has said of Mr. Phoenix: ''The talent is original and the personality is original. River doesn't know how to do anything falsely. Give him a false direction and he'll look up helplessly. Henry Fonda had that built-in barometer of truth.''
Still a little awkward about being interviewed, Mr. Phoenix concentrated on squashing bits of rice into the paper tablecloth. With crayons supplied by the restaurant, he drew a rainbow of lines that eventually turned into ''either a spaceship or Flash Gordon's pistol,'' he said.
Mr. Phoenix already has to struggle against the image that strangers are drawing of him, including a paperback biography that he says ''is so bogus it's amazing.''
''They say I'm 155 pounds with the build of a football player,'' he said. ''I'm 137 pounds. And the image the teen magazines want to manufacture is goody-goody sticky-sweet.''
The actor is the oldest of five children: Rainbow is 16; Leaf, the only other son, who is also an actor, is 14; Liberty is 12, and Summer is 11. He had a childhood almost as strange as that of his character in ''Running on Empty.''
STREET GUITARIST AT 5
In the film, Danny Pope's parents had protested against the war in Vietnam by bombing a napalm laboratory when he was 2 years old. When River was 2, his parents joined the Children of God, a religious cult, and preached in Mexico, Puerto Rico and Venezuela. By the time he was 5, he was playing his guitar in the streets of Caracas.
''That was my only reality,'' Mr. Phoenix recalled. ''I would sing at jails with my sister and stand on street corners passing out literature containing uplifting messages about Jesus. I was nearly 7 when my parents started to leave in the middle of the night.''
In 1977, Arlyn and John Phoenix walked away from the Children of God, although their decision stranded them in a foreign country with four children, no money and no place to live. ''The group was being distorted by a leader who was getting very full of power and wealthy,'' Mrs. Phoenix said. ''We were serving God; we weren't serving our leader. It took several years to get over our pain and loneliness.''
After a few months of living in a rat-infested beach hut, the family slipped out of Venezuela on a freighter taking a shipment of toys to Florida.
PURE, NAIVE, POOR
In Florida, Mr. Phoenix said: ''Rich kids gave us their old clothes, which were the best clothes we had ever had. We were these very pure, naive, poor children. The rich kids called us a lot of names, but it never bothered us because we didn't know what the words meant.''
River and his sister Rainbow won so many local talent contests that they were written about in The St. Petersburg Times. A copy of the article found its way to the casting department at Paramount Pictures, and the family received a letter saying the children could be interviewed if they were ever in Los Angeles.
The family loaded the old station wagon and drove to California, but Paramount wasn't interested. Mrs. Phoenix found herself a job as a temporary employee at NBC. Then River's musical skills won him a role in the television series ''Seven Brides for Seven Brothers.''
He has not been in a regular school since fifth grade. ''Whatever I missed, I exchanged for something else, and it was worth it,'' he said. ''I love thinking and writing and researching stuff, going to the library and looking at microfilm. Environmental concerns are top on my list. If we don't heal the earth, we're gone.''
IN SUPPORT OF CHICKENS
His attitudes and ethics obviously echo the 60's sensibilities of his parents, but it was the 8-year-old River who persuaded his parents to give up milk and eggs. ''The chickens that lay eggs are so frustrated,'' he said. ''There's no sunlight in egg farms. It's like a concentration camp. Just the squealing of thousands of birds.''
Although the movie industry is usually a quick cure for naivete, Mr. Phoenix has not yet lost an artless trust in the kindness of strangers. Despite the superficial similarities between his childhood and that of Danny Pope, the actor said he used nothing from his own life in ''Running on Empty.''
''It takes away from my character's identity if I cross my past with his,'' Mr. Phoenix said. ''He needs to have his own life. I find it funny that so many actors are so self-centered about everything.''
The family retreated from Southern California to Florida a year ago. ''They moved for the kids,'' Mr. Phoenix said. ''The kind of people you attract in Hollywood don't have their heads in the right place.''
At the end of last month he and a band made up of Rainbow and teen-age friends rented a local theater for $65 and gave a concert of the progressive folk-rock music he composes. The first 65 people donated $1 each. Everyone else got in free. Music has always been his first love. Now, Mr. Phoenix said, acting is starting to catch up.
Copyright - New York Times
A few months past his 18th birthday, Mr. Phoenix is not yet into glittering prizes. If the awards ceremony conflicts with an anti-fur concert at which he has agreed to play his guitar, the popular young actor says he will keep his commitment to the animal-rights group. He does not wear animal skin on his back, at his waist or, most of the time, on his feet. And he has been a vegetarian since he was 8 years old.
During his most recent trip to Hollywood from his home in Florida, he picked at some vegetables mixed with tofu and talked about the immorality of eating meat.
''When I was old enough to realize all meat was killed, I saw it as an irrational way of using our power, to take a weaker thing and mutilate it,'' he said. ''It was like the way bullies would take control of younger kids in the schoolyard.''
ENVIABLE REVIEWS
As Danny Pope, who has spent 15 years hiding behind false identities in ''Running on Empty'' and who must choose between betraying his parents or his future, Mr. Phoenix earned enviable reviews, as well as a nomination today as best supporting actor for the Golden Globes given out by the Hollywood Foreign Press Association. But the film did poorly at the box office last fall, selling less than $3 million worth of tickets. In a quest for an Academy Award nomination for Mr. Phoenix, Warner Brothers re-released the movie at a theater in Los Angeles a few weeks ago and intends to reopen in New York in the middle of this month.
Mr. Phoenix's reviews have been glowing since his first appearance as the sturdy 12-year-old leader of four young boys searching for the body of a dead boy in ''Stand by Me.'' He even got away relatively unscathed when critics mauled ''Little Nikita,'' in which he played the all-American son of Russian spies, and ''The Mosquito Coast,'' in which he played Harrison Ford's son.
The young actor has just finished a cameo role in Steven Spielberg's new movie, ''Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade,'' in which he plays Jones as a teen-age daredevil, ''with lots of mad escapes.'' He said he did not mimic Mr. Ford's Indiana Jones, but ''used him as a reference.''
''When Indiana Jones is in trouble,'' Mr. Phoenix said, ''he'll give a real laugh and dart his eyes to the right or left and freeze a smile, a perpetual smirk.''
The new movie will reveal the origins of Jones's phobia about snakes. ''I had to do a scene where I'm at the bottom of a crate in a circus reptile car and I have to deal with thousands of snakes,'' Mr. Phoenix said.
BUILT IN BAROMETER
Sidney Lumet, the director of ''Running on Empty,'' has said of Mr. Phoenix: ''The talent is original and the personality is original. River doesn't know how to do anything falsely. Give him a false direction and he'll look up helplessly. Henry Fonda had that built-in barometer of truth.''
Still a little awkward about being interviewed, Mr. Phoenix concentrated on squashing bits of rice into the paper tablecloth. With crayons supplied by the restaurant, he drew a rainbow of lines that eventually turned into ''either a spaceship or Flash Gordon's pistol,'' he said.
Mr. Phoenix already has to struggle against the image that strangers are drawing of him, including a paperback biography that he says ''is so bogus it's amazing.''
''They say I'm 155 pounds with the build of a football player,'' he said. ''I'm 137 pounds. And the image the teen magazines want to manufacture is goody-goody sticky-sweet.''
The actor is the oldest of five children: Rainbow is 16; Leaf, the only other son, who is also an actor, is 14; Liberty is 12, and Summer is 11. He had a childhood almost as strange as that of his character in ''Running on Empty.''
STREET GUITARIST AT 5
In the film, Danny Pope's parents had protested against the war in Vietnam by bombing a napalm laboratory when he was 2 years old. When River was 2, his parents joined the Children of God, a religious cult, and preached in Mexico, Puerto Rico and Venezuela. By the time he was 5, he was playing his guitar in the streets of Caracas.
''That was my only reality,'' Mr. Phoenix recalled. ''I would sing at jails with my sister and stand on street corners passing out literature containing uplifting messages about Jesus. I was nearly 7 when my parents started to leave in the middle of the night.''
In 1977, Arlyn and John Phoenix walked away from the Children of God, although their decision stranded them in a foreign country with four children, no money and no place to live. ''The group was being distorted by a leader who was getting very full of power and wealthy,'' Mrs. Phoenix said. ''We were serving God; we weren't serving our leader. It took several years to get over our pain and loneliness.''
After a few months of living in a rat-infested beach hut, the family slipped out of Venezuela on a freighter taking a shipment of toys to Florida.
PURE, NAIVE, POOR
In Florida, Mr. Phoenix said: ''Rich kids gave us their old clothes, which were the best clothes we had ever had. We were these very pure, naive, poor children. The rich kids called us a lot of names, but it never bothered us because we didn't know what the words meant.''
River and his sister Rainbow won so many local talent contests that they were written about in The St. Petersburg Times. A copy of the article found its way to the casting department at Paramount Pictures, and the family received a letter saying the children could be interviewed if they were ever in Los Angeles.
The family loaded the old station wagon and drove to California, but Paramount wasn't interested. Mrs. Phoenix found herself a job as a temporary employee at NBC. Then River's musical skills won him a role in the television series ''Seven Brides for Seven Brothers.''
He has not been in a regular school since fifth grade. ''Whatever I missed, I exchanged for something else, and it was worth it,'' he said. ''I love thinking and writing and researching stuff, going to the library and looking at microfilm. Environmental concerns are top on my list. If we don't heal the earth, we're gone.''
IN SUPPORT OF CHICKENS
His attitudes and ethics obviously echo the 60's sensibilities of his parents, but it was the 8-year-old River who persuaded his parents to give up milk and eggs. ''The chickens that lay eggs are so frustrated,'' he said. ''There's no sunlight in egg farms. It's like a concentration camp. Just the squealing of thousands of birds.''
Although the movie industry is usually a quick cure for naivete, Mr. Phoenix has not yet lost an artless trust in the kindness of strangers. Despite the superficial similarities between his childhood and that of Danny Pope, the actor said he used nothing from his own life in ''Running on Empty.''
''It takes away from my character's identity if I cross my past with his,'' Mr. Phoenix said. ''He needs to have his own life. I find it funny that so many actors are so self-centered about everything.''
The family retreated from Southern California to Florida a year ago. ''They moved for the kids,'' Mr. Phoenix said. ''The kind of people you attract in Hollywood don't have their heads in the right place.''
At the end of last month he and a band made up of Rainbow and teen-age friends rented a local theater for $65 and gave a concert of the progressive folk-rock music he composes. The first 65 people donated $1 each. Everyone else got in free. Music has always been his first love. Now, Mr. Phoenix said, acting is starting to catch up.
Copyright - New York Times
"Once when we were fifteen, River and I went out for a fancy dinner in Manhattan, and I ordered soft-shell crabs. He left the restaurant and walked around on Park Avenue, crying. I went out and he said, 'I love you so much, why?' He had such pain that I was eating an animal, that he hadn't impressed on me what was right."
Martha Plimpton
In carrying out its Mission, RPCP is guided by the life, inspiration and activism of River Phoenix.
The Center honors his dedication and courageous contribution in the field of entertainment as well as to the well-being of the planet and all life that lives thereon. From an early age, he had the foresight to see and feel the connectedness of all life which led him to become a social justice, animal rights, environmental and peace activist. His approach was "solution-based" and RPCP is dedicated to following this path.
The Center honors his dedication and courageous contribution in the field of entertainment as well as to the well-being of the planet and all life that lives thereon. From an early age, he had the foresight to see and feel the connectedness of all life which led him to become a social justice, animal rights, environmental and peace activist. His approach was "solution-based" and RPCP is dedicated to following this path.
"River - You chose to speak out about injustice, the welfare of animals, human rights and the planet. You believed we all have a responsibility to each other. You believed speaking the truth carries no risk but silence in the face of things that matter has the potential to destroy us all. You believed in the truth inside each of us. You didn’t let ignorance, cruelty, bigotry, racism, sexism or the selfishness in our culture make you apathetic. You knew there was a choice. You chose to choose differently. You inspired a generation. Here’s to your timelessness as you continue to inspire for generations to come."
Rain Phoenix
SOME OF RIVER'S FAVOURITE CHARITIES
ALDF (Animal Legal Defence Fund)
River was a spokesperson for ALDF's Students Against Dissection Hotline up until his passing.
Page from an ALDF newsletter featuring River
"I'm working with Students Against Dissection because I believe that students have a special role to play in alleviating animal suffering. Dissection teaches the cruel lesson that animal life is cheap and expendable. Choosing alternatives to dissection in biology classes is a simple and direct way for students to show respect for animals." - River
EarthSave was founded by John Robbins, a friend of River's and he was a great supporter of the organisation.
River Phoenix (August 23, 1970 — October 31, 1993), an Oscar nominated actor whose performances touched hearts and inspired imaginations, River also had a deep commitment to animal rights and sustainability. Indeed, he looked at his career as having value insofar as he could leverage it to make a difference in the world. His family was among the first major financial supporters of YES!’s work, and his siblings and mother have continued to support YES! in the years since his passing. River’s life and work were among the many inspirations for YES!’s Leveraging Privilege for Social Change program.
PETA (People For The Ethical Treatment Of Animals)
On 30th September 2015 during the 35th Anniversary celebrations for PETA, the Phoenix family took to the stage to honour River and present the first ever River Phoenix Humanitarian Award. The award went to film-maker, Shaun Monson. Video credit to rivjudephoenix @ YouTube.
The Phoenix family together on the red carpet
Film-maker, Shaun Monson receives the first ever River Phoenix Humanitarian Award
Earth Day 1990
Click here to read River's Earth Day essay from April 1990
"If I have some celebrity, I hope I can use it to make a difference. The true social reward is that I can speak my mind and share my thoughts about the environment and civilisation itself. There's so much shit happening with people who are exploiting their positions and creating a lot of negativity."
River Phoenix
