He earned the Volpi Cup for Best Actor and the Independent Spirit Award for Best Male Lead for his performance as Michael Waters, a gay hustler in search of his estranged mother in the Gus Van Sant drama My Own Private Idaho (1991).

Phoenix died at age 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.

Talent agent Iris Burton spotted River, Joaquin, and their sisters Summer and Rain singing for spare change in Westwood, Los Angeles, and was so charmed by the family that she soon represented the four siblings.

[19] Phoenix started doing commercials for Mitsubishi, Ocean Spray and Saks Fifth Avenue, and soon afterward he and the other children were signed by Paramount Pictures casting director Penny Marshall.

In 1980, Phoenix began to fully pursue his career as an actor, making his first appearance on a TV show called Fantasy singing with his sister Rain.

[10] Almost a year after Seven Brides ended in 1983, Phoenix found a new role in the 1984 television movie Celebrity, in which he played the part of young Jeffie Crawford.

[23][better source needed] In October 1984, Phoenix secured the role of geeky boy-scientist Wolfgang Müller in Joe Dante's big-budget science-fiction film Explorers alongside Ethan Hawke, and production began soon after.

In October 1986, Phoenix co-starred alongside Tuesday Weld and Geraldine Fitzgerald in the acclaimed CBS television movie Circle of Violence: A Family Drama, which told a story of domestic elder abuse.

[24] Phoenix was next cast as the lead in the teen comedy-drama A Night in the Life of Jimmy Reardon (1988), but was disappointed with his performance: "It didn't turn out the way I thought it would, and I put the blame on myself.

In the romantic coming-of-age drama set in San Francisco, Phoenix portrayed a young U.S. Marine on the night before he is shipped off to Vietnam in November 1963.

In his review for Newsweek, David Ansen praised Phoenix's performance as gay hustler Michael Waters: "The campfire scene in which Mike awkwardly declares his unrequited love for Scott is a marvel of delicacy.

However, Phoenix declined to reprise the role due to having started his career in different sitcoms and struggled hard to get out from the television medium, not being willing to return to it.

Before securing an acting agent, Phoenix and his siblings tried to forge a career in music by playing cover versions on the streets of the Westwood district of LA, often being moved along by police because gathering crowds would obstruct the sidewalk.

While working on the film The Thing Called Love in 1993, Phoenix wrote and recorded the song "Lone Star State of Mine", which he performs in the movie.

In 1996, the Aleka's Attic track "Note to a Friend" was released on the 1996 benefit album In Defense of Animals; Volume II and featured Flea of Red Hot Chili Peppers on bass.

[51] Phoenix was an investor in the original House of Blues (founded by his good friend and Sneakers co-star Dan Aykroyd) in Cambridge, Massachusetts, which opened its doors to the public after serving a group of homeless people on Thanksgiving Day 1992.

"[25] In 1990, Phoenix wrote an environmental awareness essay about Earth Day targeted at his young fan base, which was printed in Seventeen magazine.

[56] As well as giving speeches at rallies for various groups, Phoenix and his band often played environmental benefits for well-known charities as well as local ones in the Gainesville, Florida area.

"[61] Pink, a roman à clef by director Gus Van Sant, asserts that Phoenix was not a regular drug user but only an occasional one, and that the actor had a more serious problem with alcohol.

[64] In Bob Forrest's book, Running with Monsters, he wrote that Phoenix spent the days preceding his death on a drug binge with John Frusciante from the Red Hot Chili Peppers.

[65] On the evening of October 30, 1993, Phoenix arrived with his girlfriend Samantha Mathis, his brother Joaquin, and sister Rain at The Viper Room, a Hollywood nightclub partly owned by Johnny Depp.

[70] After Phoenix's death, the club became a makeshift shrine, with fans and mourners leaving flowers, pictures and candles on the sidewalk, and graffiti messages on the walls of the venue.

[73] On November 24, 1993, Arlyn Phoenix (who later changed her name to Heart) published an open letter in the Los Angeles Times on her son's life and death.

Phoenix spoke often of his firm opposition to all forms of oppression, and affirmatively espoused beliefs in compassion that reach across narrow boundaries including racial, national and species.

For example, the actor declined a lucrative advertising gig that would have required him to wear the skin of a tortured cow, which led his peers to endorse Phoenix's image as a courageous role model.

[75] Phoenix's compassion for all beings was evident, and he was widely regarded "as the model of good health, clean living, and professional dedication—a cleaned-up '90s James Dean.

Phoenix's status as a teen idol and promising young actor, and his subsequent premature death, made him a frequent subject in popular culture media.

[86] Gus Van Sant, with whom Phoenix worked in the film My Own Private Idaho, dedicated his 1993 movie Even Cowgirls Get the Blues as well as his 1997 novel Pink to him.

Experimental Santa Cruz filmmaker Cam Archer also produced a documentary called Drowning River Phoenix as part of his American Fame series.

[92][93] With the song Halloween on the album Storm Hymnal: Gems from the Vault, the band Grant Lee Buffalo paid homage to River Phoenix.