Joaquin Phoenix owes his acting career largely to his brother River, who died in 1993. “Without him, he probably wouldn’t have started acting,” according to Variety, 44-year-old Joaquin said in an emotional speech at the Toronto International Film Festival.
“When I was 15 or 16 years old, my brother came home with a video tape of ‘Raging Bull’. He told me to sit down and watch the film, “said the” Joker “actor after receiving the Tribute Actor Award. “And the next day I woke up and forced me to watch it again. And he said: you are going to act again. That is what you must do. He didn’t ask me, he told me. ”Joaquin is still grateful to his brother for that. “I owe him all my gratitude, because acting has given me such a great life.”
Phoenix received the new oeuvre prize together with Meryl Streep, who is the first actress to receive the new award. Phoenix will soon be seen as the Joker, the villain from the Batman universe. The film will premiere at the beginning of October.
River Phoenix was also an actor himself. He started his career at a very young age and was nominated for an Oscar for the film ‘Running On Empty’ at the age of 17. The general public mainly knows him as the young Indiana Jones in ‘The Last Crusade’. However, the successful young man died on the sidewalk of a nightclub at the age of 23. He suffered a heart attack as a result of an overdose of heroin and cocaine.