Martha Plimpton remembers “first love” River Phoenix three decades on from actor’s death
Martha Plimpton has been reflecting on her relationship with River Phoenix over 30 years after the actor’s death aged 23.
The Goonies actor appeared on Jesse Tyler Ferguson’s Dinner’s On Me podcast earlier this week when he asked her what it was like to be part of a young, famous couple with Phoenix.
She revealed that the pair were uncomfortable with the public’s attention on them, and explained that Phoenix had been struggling with his fame as he got further into adulthood. “He was not as equipped, I think, as maybe some other people might be to handle that stuff,” she said. “Because he was a very, at heart, very innocent and a driven-by-love human being. So the contradictions of Hollywood and show business were much more difficult for him.”
The pair began a relationship during the filming of the 1986 drama The Mosquito Coast and dated for almost four years before staying as friends. Plimpton, who stars in the upcoming HBO crime drama Task alongside Mark Ruffalo, described Phoenix as her “first love” and called him a “huge part” of her formative years.
“That relationship never really goes away. You can’t ever let something like that go,” she explained. “It’s just too important and too, like, altering. I mean, it’s made you who you are, especially in those really formative years. I mean, it’s a huge part of who I am.”
Phoenix and Plimpton’s relationship ended due to the former’s drug use, with Plimpton saying later, “When we split up, a lot of it was that I had learned that screaming, fighting and begging wasn’t going to change him. He had to change himself, and he didn’t want to yet.”
Phoenix was 23 when he died from a drug overdose outside The Viper Room in Los Angeles on October 31, 1993. Plimpton became tearful discussing his substance misuse and said that he “would have been an incredible advocate for sobriety and for people struggling with addiction” had he been able to get the help he needed before he died.
“Unfortunately, it just got him before he had a chance to do that. But yeah, I miss him every single day,” she added.
Elsewhere in the interview, Plimpton discussed the financial struggles she faced before landing a main role in the Fox sitcom Raising Hope, which ran from 2010 to 2014. She touched on The Goonies too, joking: “Sometimes it upsets me that it’s going to be the first thing listed in my obituary. You know what I mean?”
Back in September, she denied that The Goonies 2 was in the works amid speculation that a sequel could be coming.
You can listen to Plimpton’s full episode of Dinner’s On Me here:
The post Martha Plimpton remembers “first love” River Phoenix three decades on from actor’s death appeared first on NME.
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