In Reply to: Let's not be rumor-mongers posted by Alan on November 07, 2003 at 03:10:26:
When I first started commenting on this, I had not looked at any River Phoenix info in quite some time. I was probably more open to the idea that the Family had something to do with his death, just because so much time has passed.
But, I looked at this series of photos from another website, and when you see the progression, you can really read a lot into what this young man was experiencing in his life. The story that makes the most sense to me is that he got on the film "My Own Private Idaho", which featured many authentic street kids from the Pacific Northwest. He started to experiment with drugs at that time, and it got out of control. He had lived a very healthy vegan lifestyle before that, and probably had very little tolerance for the hard drugs he was using, which included combinations of heroin and cocaine.
If you look at the photos on the website below, especially the one in the lower left corner you can really see it. I've had a great deal of acting training, and what I mean when I say RP was a "natural" is that he was not a trained professional that could just turn it on and turn it off. He was more "method", in that what he did on screen reflected where he was at as a person. I could always be wrong, but that photo in the lower left doesn't look like a lot of makeup to me. It looks like a young man out of control on drugs.
http://www.river-phoenix.org/