[custom_adv] Not long before we drive to his favorite sushi bar in Los Angeles, Joaquin Phoenix, the actor, tells the story of how he became a vegan. It was October 28, 1977, his third birthday, and Phoenix and his family were aboard a cargo ship bound for Miami from Venezuela. [custom_adv] His parents had just abandoned their lives as followers of a notorious religious cult, the Children of God, which was led by a charismatic former preacher named David Berg, who called himself Moses. [custom_adv] Phoenix’s parents, who spent much of the late 1960s wandering the West Coast in a VW microbus, had become missionaries, traveling around the southern U.S., Venezuela, and Puerto Rico, and giving birth to Rain, Joaquin, and Liberty along the way. To sing about God, Rain and first-born River went busking on the street. The organization made Phoenix’s parents “the archbishops” of Venezuela and Trinidad. [custom_adv] In those years, Children of God had not descended fully into the darkness and perversion for which it became infamous, including the use of sex for recruitment and allegedly introducing children to sex at a young age. The family was far from Berg’s orbit. When they realized what was happening, the Phoenixes, whose last name was then Bottom, left the cult, disillusioned, penniless, and expecting a fifth child, Summer. [custom_adv] Phoenix is an activist, primarily concerned with animal rights (he’s been a vegan since he was 3) and has supported, among others, PETA, Red Cross and Amnesty International — but how would anyone know this, since he has no social-media presence (no Facebook, no Instagram, no Twitter) to connect with followers and inspire them? [custom_adv] It seems indicative of Phoenix himself; extremely passionate but unconcerned with the reality, the tangible facts, of what he does and who he is: the most soulful screen actor of his generation, and arguably its greatest. [custom_adv] Phoenix became a near-household name after playing sword-and-sandal scumbag Commodus in Best Picture-winner Gladiator, in which he got his first of three Oscar acting nominations. But for several years after, Phoenix remained in character actor mode, taking supporting roles if he found the movie compelling (Quills, Hotel Rwanda, Signs), in between lead star parts such as in Buffalo Soldiers and The Village. [custom_adv] Joaquin Phoenix was one of the most respected actors of his age. Born in San Juan, Puerto Rico in 1974 to parents from the mainland U.S., Phoenix spent much of his early childhood traveling with his family through South America as missionaries for the religious cult Children of God. [custom_adv] By the time he was eight, Phoenix's family had left the church and relocated to Los Angeles, where Phoenix's parents began entering him and his four siblings in various talent contests in an effort to earn money for the family. [custom_adv] Then tragically in 1993, Phoenix was at a Los Angeles club with friends and a number of his siblings when his brother, actor River Phoenix, collapsed and later died of a drug overdose. [custom_adv] Phoenix withdrew from the spotlight in order to process his grief, eventually emerging in 1995 to star opposite Nicole Kidman as a confused youth in Gus Van Sant's subversive drama "To Die For" (1995).
