According to Vanity Fair, Phoenix was raped at the age of four. His family settled in Caracas, Venezuela where the Children of God had stationed them to work as missionaries and fruit gatherers. In 1973, the family joined the religious organization known as the Children of God. I mean, he could read and write, and he had an appetite for it, but he had no deep roots into any kind of sense of history or literature." George Sluizer claimed Phoenix was dyslexic. Screenwriter Naomi Foner later commented, "He was totally, totally without education. Phoenix has stated that they lived in a "desperate situation." Phoenix often played guitar while he and his sister sang on street corners for money and food to support their ever-growing family. Phoenix's family moved cross country when he was very young. They married on September 13, 1969, less than a year after meeting. While hitchhiking in California she met John Lee Bottom.
In 1968, Phoenix's mother travelled across the United States. His father was a lapsed Catholic from Fontana, California, of English, German, and French ancestry. His mother was born in New York to Jewish parents whose families had emigrated from Russia and Hungary. In an interview with People, Phoenix described his parents as " hippieish". Phoenix's parents named him after the river of life from the Hermann Hesse novel Siddhartha, and he received his middle name from the Beatles' song " Hey Jude". Phoenix was born on August 23, 1970, in Madras, Oregon, the first child of Arlyn Dunetz and John Lee Bottom.
Phoenix died at the age of 23 from combined drug intoxication in West Hollywood in the early hours of Halloween, 1993, having overdosed on cocaine and heroin (a mixture commonly known as speedball) at The Viper Room. For his performance in the latter, Phoenix garnered enormous praise and won a Volpi Cup for Best Actor at the 1991 Venice Film Festival as well as Independent Spirit Award for Best Male Lead and National Society of Film Critics Award for Best Actor, becoming the second-youngest winner of the former. Phoenix made a transition into more adult-oriented roles with Running on Empty (1988), playing Danny Pope, the son of fugitive parents in a well-received performance that earned him a nomination for an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor (at age 18, he became the sixth-youngest nominee in the category), and My Own Private Idaho (1991), playing Michael Waters, a gay hustler in search of his estranged mother. He starred in the science fiction adventure film Explorers (1985) and had his first notable role in 1986's Stand by Me, a coming-of-age film based on the novella The Body by Stephen King.
He began his acting career at age 10 in television commercials.
He had no formal schooling, but showed an instinctive talent for the guitar. Phoenix grew up in an itinerant family, as older brother of Rain Phoenix, Joaquin Phoenix, Liberty Phoenix, and Summer Phoenix. River Jude Phoenix ( né Bottom Aug– October 31, 1993) was an American actor and musician.