Joaquin Phoenix Named His New Baby Boy After His Late Brother
Joaquin Phoenix and Rooney Mara have reportedly got some big news to celebrate.
Director Victor Kossakovsky announced that the Joker star had become a dad at the Zurich Film Festival while promoting Gunda, on which Joaquin serves as an executive producer.
Explaining his absence, Victor said: "He just got a baby, by the way, his name was... a beautiful son called River, so he cannot promote [the film] right now."
River was the name of Joaquin's older brother, who passed away in 1993 at the age of 23 following a drug overdose outside a nightclub.
While accepting his Oscar for Best Actor at this year's Academy Awards, the actor honoured his brother in his speech.
"When he was 17, my brother [River] wrote this lyric. He said, 'Run to the rescue with love and peace will follow.'"
Other members of the Phoenix family have also paid tribute to the late Stand by Me actor when naming their children.
His sister Liberty Phoenix named her son Rio, the Spanish translation of River, and Summer Phoenix called her son Indiana, after the actor's role in Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade.
Joaquin and Rooney, who confirmed their engagement in May 2019, first met in 2013 while working on the film Her.
They later reunited on the movie Mary Magdalene three years later, which is when they started dating.
Opening up about their relationship, the 45-year-old told Vanity Fair about first meeting Mara.
"She's the only girl I ever looked up on the internet," he said. "We were just friends, email friends. I'd never done that. Never looked up a girl online."
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