Once when we were fifteen, River and I went out for this fancy dinner in Manhattan and I ordered soft-shell crabs. He left the restaurant and walked around on Park Avenue, crying. I went out and said, I love you so much. Why?" He had such a pain that I was eating an animal, that he hadn`t impressed on me what was right. I loved him for that. For his dramatic desire that we share every belief, that I be with him all the way" (On River Phoenix, Cosmopolitan, April 1995).

I realized as I got older that I could choose to be an actor to a certain extent, but movie stardom is not something you choose. It chooses you. You have very little control over that. So I stopped considering that an option.