A child actor who began in the shadow of his famous older brother. The Shadow matured into an unconventionally handsome adult performer with an impressive range, first winning widespread notice and acclaim for his lead role in the critically acclaimed satire "To Die For" (1995). With his scrawny frame, lank hair and suggestion of a harelip, he lacked the drop-dead good looks of his older sibling the late River Phoenix. Nonetheless he brought both poignancy and intensity to his portrayal of a love-struck but dim-witted lower-class teen seduced into murder.

After a peripatetic childhood traveling with his missionary parents and siblings in Puerto Rico, Venezuela and Mexico, Phoenix broke into show business around the age of eight with a bit part on "Seven Brides for Seven Brothers", a CBS TV series on which River was a regular. A year or two earlier, he had changed his given first name to 'Leaf', in part because people continually mispronounced Joaquin. As Phoenix somewhat tongue-in-cheekily explained to Details magazine (November 1995), "My dad was raking up all these leaves and it was some weird thing I conjured up. Then as I got older I thought it was stupid, so I went back to the original." All of his credits prior "To Die For" were as Leaf Phoenix.

Phoenix's TV guest shots include appearances on "Hill Street Blues", "The Fall Guy" and "Murder, She Wrote". He was a regular on "Morningstar/Eveningstar" (CBS, 1986), a short-lived dramatic series in which the residents of a retirement home take in the residents of an orphanage that has burned down. Phoenix entered features inauspiciously as an adorable moppet who befriends an even cuter robot in "SpaceCamp" (1986). He offered a wooden rendition of a gung-ho kid who comes upon a beached Soviet sailor in the well-meaning "Russkies" (1987) but fared better as the troublesome teenage son of Dianne Wiest in Ron Howard's "Parenthood" (1989).

Following a hiatus from performance capped by the revelation of his return in "To Die For", The Shadow resumed his career, co-starring in "Inventing the Abbotts" (1997), a drama about two brothers who discover a secret connection between their family and that of three beautiful sisters to whom they are attracted. The hot young cast included Billy Crudup Joanna Going and Liv Tyler (with whom he began a highly publicized off-screen relationship). Later that same year, he was the hot-headed young husband of Claire Danes in Oliver Stone's comic noir "U-Turn". 1998 saw him twice paired with Vince Vaughn: In "Return to Paradise", Phoenix was an American jailed in Malaysia for possession of drugs that belonged to Vaughn while the black comedy "Clay Pigeons" saw him as a dupe to Vaughn's smooth-talking serial killer.

Continuing his ascendant star track, Phoenix played a streetwise punk who helps detective Nicolas Cage in his search for the truth behind what appears to be a snuff film in "8mm" (1999), directed by Joel Schumacher. 2000, however, proved a banner year for the actor. He garnered attention as the slick aide to a corrupt businessman in "The Yards" before nearly stealing "Gladiator" from star Russell Crowe with his malevolently operatic take on the young emperor Commodus. Phoenix demonstrated his range by underplaying his next high profile part, the Abbe Coulmier who oversees the madhouse at Charenton where the Marquis de Sade has been confined in "Quills". Skillfully delineating a man of the cloth torn by his duty and his desires (he harbors his own lustful feelings for a virginal laundress), the actor offered a fine performance that was both a capper for a prolific year and a harbinger of richer work to come.

In 2002, Phoenix appeared with Mel Gibsonas his son in the thriller "Signs." The M. Night Shyamalan directed film told the story of a family on a farm who discover myseterious crop circles on their land. Also in 2002, Phoenix starred with Claire Danes in the romantic drama "It's All About Love."