Master Class

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This story may help explain why it's been a while since you've seen a Joaquin Phoenix movie. "If you're bringing that much physical and emotional intensity to a part, you can't just line up four pictures a year," Mangold says. "If Joaq has seemed ambivalent about acting at times, I think it's because it's just so taxing."

Phoenix's early life, like his acting, was marked by adventure, improvisation and a total lack of a safety net. He was born in Puerto Rico in 1974, the third of five children of Arlyn and John Bottom, who were missionaries for the hippie cult Children of God. After transferring to Caracas, his parents broke ties with the cult and faced crushing poverty. "We stayed in a tiny room off a tiny house where my parents took care of this woman and she allowed us to live there in return," Phoenix says. "At a moment of real desperation — because we were straight-up dirt poor, we had nothing — we went into the woman's house to take food, and she caught us." He shudders at the memory. "I remember that fear so well, that terror, because we loved her. She was the only person looking out for us — we would have been homeless without her."

The family eventually stowed away on a cargo ship to Florida and later relocated yet again, to Los Angeles. They took on a new surname, Phoenix, to signify their new start. Arlyn Phoenix found a secretarial job at NBC and sought out auditions for her older children, who were already seasoned street performers. River, the eldest, booked a swath of commercials and TV appearances, which led to movie roles; one of Joaquin's earliest gigs, at age 9, was playing River's younger brother in an ABC Afterschool Special.

Phoenix loved being a child actor. "On the first job I ever did, there was a fight scene. I was 8, and though I knew it wasn't real and they were actors, I was emotionally affected by it. I felt the adrenaline race through my body. There are kids who get on a BMX bike when they're 8 and they go, 'Whoa, this is incredible,' and grow up to do extreme sports. It's the same for me with acting."

Yet, after playing Dianne Wiest's puberty-addled son in Ron Howard's Parenthood (1989), Phoenix withdrew from acting for most of his teens. He spent part of that time living with his father and sisters in Oaxaca, Mexico. "It was an incredibly idyllic experience, waking up every day at sunrise and catching a horse bareback," he says. "I built thatched huts on a farm with other kids my age, and later I worked in a bar. There were natives, Americans, Italians, all different cultures living together. Some of my friends in the States were experiencing a lot of fear and conflict with their parents as teenagers, and that just didn't exist down there."

Back in the U.S., he began acting again, breaking out at age 20 as the stoner henchman to Nicole Kidman's perky sociopath in Gus Van Sant's black comedy To Die For (1995). Van Sant had also directed River as a lovesick gay hustler in My Own Private Idaho (1991) — the fragile pinnacle of a brief and brilliant acting career.