River Phoenix — actor with roots in the Russian Empire
River Jude Phoenix was born River Jude Bottom on 23 August 1970 near Madras, Oregon, the first of five children of John Lee Bottom, a lapsed Catholic from Fontana, California, and Arlyn Dunetz. His connection to the Russian Empire runs through his mother's father's family.
Arlyn Dunetz was born in the Bronx on 31 December 1944 to Meyer Dunetz (1910–1996) and Margaret, née Lefkowitz (1916–1998), both Jewish. According to her biography, citing a 2002 interview, her father's family came from Russia and her mother's from Hungary. That places the Russian-born generation one step further back: River's great-grandparents, the parents of Meyer Dunetz. Their names and town are not recorded in authoritative sources.
The family's early years were itinerant. In the 1970s the parents belonged for a time to the religious group known as the Children of God and lived in South America, before returning to the United States, where around 1979 they took the surname Phoenix. River had no formal schooling; with his sister Rain he sang and played guitar on the streets, and after the family moved to Los Angeles he began acting. His younger siblings Rain, Joaquin, Liberty and Summer also became actors or musicians.
His first feature film was Explorers (1985). The following year Stand by Me made him widely known, and he appeared in The Mosquito Coast. In Sidney Lumet's Running on Empty (1988), as the son of fugitive 1960s radicals, he received the National Board of Review award and nominations for a Golden Globe and the Academy Award for best supporting actor, at eighteen one of the youngest nominees in the category. He played the young Indiana Jones in Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade (1989), and as a narcoleptic street hustler in Gus Van Sant's My Own Private Idaho (1991) he won the Volpi Cup for best actor at the Venice Film Festival, the Independent Spirit Award and the National Society of Film Critics award; the same year he starred with Lili Taylor in Nancy Savoca's Dogfight. He also led the band Aleka's Attic, with Rain.
He died in West Hollywood on 31 October 1993, aged twenty-three.
Tracing the roots — Russian Empire — mother's paternal grandparents (names and town not documented)
His mother, Arlyn Dunetz, was born in the Bronx in 1944 to Meyer Dunetz and Margaret Lefkowitz; her father's family came from Russia, her mother's from Hungary. The Russian-born generation — River's great-grandparents — is not named in authoritative sources.
Same maternal family background as Joaquin Phoenix.[web:17]
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Russian Empire — mother's paternal grandparents (names and town not documented). At the time, this region lay within the Russian Empire, which spanned from Poland to the Pacific.