“River is already being made into a martyr. He’s become a metaphor for a fallen angel, a messiah. He wasn’t. He was just a boy, a very good-hearted boy who was very f*cked-up and had no idea how to implement his good intentions. I don’t want to be comforted by his death. I think it’s right that I’m angry about it, angry at the people who helped him stay sick, and angry at River.” – Martha Plimpton, River’s first love, on his death.
For a time, River Phoenix and Martha Plimpton were one of the most talked-about couples in Hollywood. Having met on the set of The Mosquito Coast in February 1986, Phoenix and Plimpton were together for more than three years, before Plimpton decided to split from Phoenix in June 1989.
It was unclear, initially, what had happened between these two seemingly perfectly matched people; even after the relationship ended, the two actors remained friends. Then came Phoenix’s untimely death in 1993. Since that day, Plimpton has largely refused to talk publicly about Phoenix, only suggesting that it was his drug problems that ultimately convinced her to leave him – and revealing that she decided to have an abortion not long after the relationship ended.
Martha Plimpton is my favorite Down Syndrom actress.
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