Happy birthday River ❤
"When it was Hearts turn, she related a vision she had: that River hadn't wanted to be born, preferring to stay with God in heaven. God had convinced him to go, and they haggled over how long, settling on twenty-three years." - Gavin Edwards, Last Night at the Viper Room.
Première: Are you satisfied with what you've achieved at this point in your career? River : Honestly, I don't think this way. I never think of me as an actor. I see all of this as new experiences each time, like as many different lives. As many reincarnations. So when I watch my last movie, I'm unable to judge or to be critical. For me, it's past, and I don't feel any connection to it anymore, like if it was somebody else than me that I'm not responsible for. I immersed myself in another life that the character appropriated. He expressed himself through me, not the other way around. Première : It sounds like you've always taken care to separate your private life from your actor's work... River : Absolutely. Quite often, when actors have such a strong charisma in real life, eventually it has to affect the characters they play. For myself I'm not charismatic in that way. I'm not a "performer". Ideally I would stay mute as River. That's the reason why, for a long time, I've said the opposite of what I really thought. In interviews, I've also played characters that I wasn't. I've lied and often contradicted myself to dumbfound people. It's all over now, because I have nothing left to hide. Eventually, I'm quite an ordinary person. - By Jean-Paul Chaillet for Premiere, October 1993.
River photographed by Brice Weber for Vogue US, 1990.
"As I watched River do his work, I was impressed by his generosity with the other actors. He was never competitive. In dailies, I would often notice that Jadrian Steele, the actor who played River’s younger brother, would try to place himself in a prominent position on-screen. River always seemed to hang back to the furthest recesses. But the more he stepped out of frame, the more your eyes were drawn to him. There is a certain breed of actor who can show you everything they’re thinking without uttering a word. They are like emotional gladiators, nakedly putting themselves on the line so the audience can achieve a catharsis. But they’re more than thin-skinned - they almost have no outer coating at all. With their heightened sensitivity, they walk through the world like someone with a hearing disorder - everything is a clattering phantasmagoria to them because they feel too intensely to have a normal life." - Reid Rosefelt
"River was one of the most diplomatic people I've ever known. He had a way of making things flow - of taking energy from one place and driving it in another direction. He was constantly trying to keep things peaceful." - Josh Greenbaum
River as Talbot Roe, Silent Tongue (1993) directed by Sam Shepard. "I love Sam Shepard, he is like a father to me. We don't even have to talk, we communicate without words." - River
“I, too, was very affected by River Phoenix’s death. I read an incredible article about him in one of the magazines. I have it in my scrapbook. I saved it. I wrote a long poem about it, relating it to all the people I had known that had just gotten way beyond themselves on drugs, and not being able to get to them in time to save them. I circled parts of it, read parts of the article out loud to my mom, and to a couple of my friends. I called my brother… I thought, if I could have met him, I could have saved him. I know that. And I thought about it for days. He reminds me of someone I know really well.”
- Stevie Nicks