page_title: River Phoenix
section_title: Death
hierarchical_section_title: River Phoenix / Death
caption_attribution_description: The Viper Room, 8852 W Sunset Blvd, West Hollywood, CA. Photograph by Mike Dillon, May 10, 2006.
context_page_description: River Jude Phoenix was an American actor, musician, and activist.
  Phoenix grew up in an itinerant family, as older brother of Rain Phoenix, Joaquin Phoenix, Liberty Phoenix, and Summer Phoenix. He had no formal schooling, but showed an instinctive talent for the guitar. He began his acting career at age 10 in television commercials. He starred in the science fiction adventure film Explorers 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. Phoenix made a transition into more adult-oriented roles with Running on Empty, 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, and My Own Private Idaho, playing a gay hustler Michael Waters in search of his estranged mother. For his performance in the latter, Phoenix garnered enormous praise and won a Volpi Cup for Best Actor at the Venice Film Festival, along with Best Actor from the National Society of Film Critics.
  Phoenix died of a drug overdose in West Hollywood in the early hours of October 31, 1993 at age 23.
context_section_description: In late October 1993, Phoenix had returned to Los Angeles, only there for 1 day, after flying back from 1 week in New Mexico and before that 6 to 7 weeks in Utah to complete the three weeks of interior shots left on his last project, Dark Blood, a film that was finally completed in 2012.
  Musician (and future drug counselor) Bob Forrest, a good friend of Phoenix, in his 2013 memoir Running With Monsters, gave one of the most detailed accounts of Phoenix's final days and the moments leading up to his death. 
  On the evening of October 30, 1993, Phoenix was to perform with the band P; which featured his good friends Flea from the Red Hot Chili Peppers, actor Johnny Depp, Gibby Haynes of the Butthole Surfers along with Al Jourgensen of Ministry at The Viper Room, a Hollywood nightclub partly owned at the time by Depp. Forrest claims that Phoenix and Frusciante arrived at the club together, where they would meet up with Phoenix's girlfriend Samantha Mathis, Phoenix's brother Joaquin, and their sister Rain, along with Flea and Depp. After arriving, cocaine was immediately passed around. Forrest later said that Phoenix was obviously already high and was, as he put it, "unsteady as a boxer who had taken one too many head-shots during a fifteen-round bout."
  During the performance by P, Forrest said that Phoenix tapped him on the shoulder to tell him he was not feeling well, and that he thought he had overdosed. Forrest said to Phoenix that he didn't think that he was overdosing because he could stand and talk. Nonetheless, he offered to take Phoenix home, but Phoenix declined, saying he was feeling better. A few moments later, Forrest said that a commotion erupted in the club and he went outside to find Mathis screaming as her boyfriend was lying on the sidewalk having convulsions. Joaquin called 9-1-1, but was unable to determine whether Phoenix was breathing. His sister Rain proceeded to give him mouth-to-mouth resuscitation.
  When the ambulance arrived, Phoenix was still alive and Flea went with him to Cedars-Sinai Hospital. When Forrest arrived at the hospital he saw Mathis standing in the hallway crying. Further attempts to resuscitate Phoenix at the hospital were unsuccessful. He was pronounced dead at 1:51 a.m. PST on the morning of October 31, 1993 at the age of 23.
  
  In the 2013 book, Last Night at the Viper Room: River Phoenix and the Hollywood He Left Behind, Gavin Edwards blames Frusciante for being the one who gave Phoenix the drugs that took his life. In an interview with director William Richert, Edwards discusses Phoenix's death, stating that Samantha Mathis also accused Frusciante. 
  River didn't want to go that night. She (Mathis) offered to take Joaquin (Leaf back then) and Rain for him since Joaquin was still underage. River changed his mind at the last minute and ran to meet them at the elevator. So River arrived with Samantha, Joaquin, and Rain, they got a booth in the back and he waited to be invited up to play. He stayed sober because he was planning on getting onstage with Flea. After he found out that there is not enough room onstage for him, he was going to take his guitar back to his table and play." According to Richert, after reaching the club, Mathis said John Frusciante approached their table, offered River a little plastic blue cup and said, "drink this, Riv, it'll make you feel fabulous." River drank it down and suffered an immediate reaction. His neck bulged, his back twitched, and he complained, "something’s wrong." He then vomited at the table.
   Richert said that Mathis would later change her story, no longer mentioning Frusciante by name. Richert also mentioned that following the death of Phoenix, Frusciante became paranoid, and threatened to kill himself because he feared that he would be arrested. He claimed that Frusciante locked himself away for a few days in the mansion where the Red Hot Chili Peppers recorded their 1991 album Blood Sugar Sex Magik. Richert said that Johnny Depp had to console Frusciante, and assure him that nobody was going to jail. At the time, Phoenix's father was also an
caption: The Viper Room on Sunset Strip in Los Angeles, where Phoenix collapsed on the sidewalk and died
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