JOAQUIN PHOENIX Biography - Other artists & entretainers

 
 

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JOAQUIN PHOENIX
       

Birth Name : Joaquin Raphael Phoenix
Date of birth : 28 October 1974
Location : San Juan, Puerto Rico

       

A child actor who began in the shadow of his famous older brother. Joaquin Phoenix matured into an unconventionally handsome adult performer with an impressive range, first winning widespread notice and acclaim for his lead role in the critically acclaimed satire “To Die For” (1995). With his scrawny frame, lank hair and suggestion of a harelip, he lacked the drop-dead good looks of his older sibling the late River Phoenix. Nonetheless he brought both poignancy and intensity to his portrayal of a love-struck but dim-witted lower-class teen seduced into murder.

       

      After a peripatetic childhood traveling with his missionary parents and siblings in Puerto Rico, Venezuela and Mexico, Phoenix broke into show business around the age of eight with a bit part on “Seven Brides for Seven Brothers", a CBS TV series on which River was a regular. A year or two earlier, he had changed his given first name to ‘Leaf’, in part because people continually mispronounced Joaquin. As Phoenix somewhat tongue-in-cheekily explained to Details magazine (November 1995), “My dad was raking up all these leaves and it was some weird thing I conjured up. Then as I got older I thought it was stupid, so I went back to the original.” All of his credits prior “To Die For” were as Leaf Phoenix.