Joaquin Phoenix and his fiancee Rooney Mara have fathered a child named after the late brother of filmmaker River Phoenix.
The news was announced by director Victor Kossakovsky at the 2020 Zurich Film Festival after the screening of the film
Gunda,
on which Joaquin is executive producer.
"By the way, he just had a baby ... A beautiful son named River."
Very jealous of their privacy Joaquin, 45, and Rooney, 35, have not officially announced the birth of their first-born, but they did not confirm their pregnancy either.
River tragically died of a drug overdose in October 1993 at the age of 23 on the sidewalk of The Viper Room, a nightclub on the Sunset Strip owned by Johnny Depp, a venue that until 2004 closed its doors every Halloween. to commemorate the star that that night became a myth.
The most tragic thing about that night, in addition to the sudden death of such a young person, was that his little brother, Joaquin Phoenix, who had just turned 19 years old three days earlier, witnessed the scene.
It was he who made that distressing call to emergencies: “My brother is on the ground, he has taken a Valium.
It's going to die".
That tragic event marked the life of Joaquin Phoenix.
Mara and Phoenix met in 2012, when they were both filming
Her
, which he starred in and in which she gave life to her show.
He, however, thought that she had fallen fatally, as he has told in an interview, although shortly after he realized that, simply, Mara was terribly shy and that, in fact, she had also felt something for him.
Their romance began when they met again on a filming set, this time in 2016, to record together
Maria Magdalena
, in which they both starred, she as Mary Magdalene herself and he as Jesus of Nazareth.
"She's the only girl I've ever looked up on the Internet," Phoenix recounted last January in a lengthy
Vanity Fair
interview
about Mara.
“We were just friends, email friends.
I have never done that.
I had never looked for a girl
online
. "
The chemistry went beyond the screen and despite their very different backgrounds, they connected.
Phoenix was born in Puerto Rico because her parents spent part of the 1970s traveling as part of the Children of God sect.
She has been vegan since she was three years old, her dogs are also vegan, and Mara is also vegan.
But she's a far cry
from the Phoenix's
hippie
origins
.
Before turning to acting, Mara studied psychology and worked for NGOs.
He began his career in small roles in series and movies in 2006, and the only known partner before Phoenix is director Charlie McDowell, whom he dated between 2010 and 2016. For his part, the brand-new Oscar winner has dated with actresses like Liv Tyler and Anna Paquin or with DJ Allie Teilz.
The Oscar winner for
Joker
last February and the interpreter of
Millennium: Men who did not love women
live quite far from the lights of Hollywood although on the occasion of the last Oscar campaign they were seen together on a carpet red.