The reluctant hero
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NEW YORK, A predictably eclectic luncheon in an East Village
restaurant. Beef, fish and fowl are banished from the menu, which suits Joaquin Phoenix fine as he has been a vegan since the age of three-and -a-half. His belt is made of fake leather, his trainers betray not the thinnest strip of suede. He wears a Goodyear baseball cap, a drab shirt and trousers that once might have marked him as a petrol station attendant, but which now mislabel him as a hipster. Phoenix is explaning how his father, despite having raised a family of film actors-Joaquin, his sisters, Rain and Summer, and most prominently his late brother, River wasn't much of a performer himself. Just a few school plays and the skits he used to put on for his children.
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Although he bagan making films at the age of 10, Phoenix still seems ambivalent about the profession. His performing career began even earlier: as a child, he sang songs on the streets of Westwood, California, with his brother and sisters, helping the family stay afloat with donathions from passers-by. Christmas was the big money season. "We did a lot of Beatles," he remembers. Sometimes, his father would melt into the crowd, pretending to be a spectator, but usually the Phoenix parents would `just sit there beaming, like beautiful, proud parents`. The children grew up as shielded from social conformity, and the massmedia that feeds it, as any American family could strive to be. Their nemes were in themselves declaretions of´ independence. The eldest, River Jude Bottom, was named before the family changed its surname to Phoenix. Rain(Rainbow) Joan of Arc Phoenix, 26, is in South Carolina shooting O, a modern -day retelling of Othello. In the first days of his film career, Joaquin Raphael Phoenix was calling himself Leaf, so as 'not to be left out', but later felt comfortable calling himself Joaquin again. Then there is Liberty Butterfly Phoenix, 22, and youngest sister Summer Joy Phoenix, 20, who is currently in England, filming Arnaud Desplechin's Esther Kahn. Their mother, Arlyn Dunetz, left her family's New York apartment when she was a teenager. 'She comes from a nice background,' Joaquin says, 'and she was doing a nine-to-five job, and she wanted something different out of life, which was very impressive.'
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'Most of my childhood,' Joaquin says, 'I grew up with both parents. They were poor, with all these kids, but they always found open arms; people took us in.' Among their benefactors was the crew of a toy companey boat, who took the destitute family back to the US after their stay in Venezuela. Joaquin turned three on that trip; he remembers the birthday cake the ship's cook baked for him.
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It was to be the start of the entire Phoenix family's conversion to
veganism. Vegan cuisine has improved over the years, but the leather prohibitions did complicate one of Joaquin's rare modeling gigs. 'When I did the Prada campaign, ' he says, 'the stylist wore the shoes. They did a separate shot of the shoes and it wasn't me. You know, it's kind of ridiculous because who the hell's going to know that? ' He bears no ill-wil to Prada footwear. 'They make nice shoes. I tried to get them to make a vegetarian shoe, but no.' He has never faced the dilemma of a meat-eating girlfriend. His former girlfriend of three years, the actress Liv Tyler, became a vegetarian after the two met on the set of Inventing the abbotts.
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At 16, he left for central America. 'I was riding horses and just growing up.' Not until Gus Van Sant, who had directed River in My private Idaho, sought him out for To Die For, did he get passionate about acting; 'I suddenly realised that, "Oh my God, I've got to do this".
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LAST YEAR, Liverty Phoenix gave birth to a son she named Rio, which was River's nickname. "He's gorgeous," enthuses Joaquin. "Curls, and he's beautiful bronze. He's half Costa Rican. His daddy is Costa Rican and he's just, ahhhh, so, gorgeous." Although Joaquin's parents have divorced, the entire family gathered to watch Rio's home birth. Joaquin himself snipped the umbilical cord. But he wouldn't anticipgate having a child of his own soon. At 24, he is still without a permanent home; his personal effects are scattered about New York, Florida, Los Angeles. 'I love that image of a father-a mom and dad-someone who's really a parent,' he says. "My dad holding me at different times, I love that ! And I love the strength and the wisdom and the years on one face-It's just gorgeous ! But I'd be too selfish right now to have such a huge responsibility, and I just don't know where it's all going. I don't think I'm terribly optimistic about the futrue of the world. So I'm a little frightened."