Joker star Joaquin Phoenix and fiancée blessed with baby boy

Oscar-winning actor Joaquin Phoenix and his fiancée Rooney Mara have welcomed their first child – a baby boy. The couple named him after Joaquin Phoenix’s late brother, actor River Phoenix, who passed away in 1993 at the age of 23 of a drug overdose.

Russian filmmaker Victor Kossakovsky reportedly announced the news during a Q&A session at the 2020 Zurich Film Festival on Sunday. Explaining the actor’s absence at the festival, Kossakovsky, who attended the screening of Joaquin Phoenix-produced documentary Gunda, said, “He just got a baby, by the way, his name was … a beautiful son called River, so he cannot promote it now.” The video of the filmmaker revealing the information has been going viral on social media. A United States magazine confirmed in May that Phoenix and Mara are expecting their first child together. “Rooney is about six months along. Joaquin is great and has been accompanying her to appointments,” the magazine quoted a source.

Joaquin Phoenix and Rooney Mara started dating after meeting on the sets of ‘Mary Magdalene’ in 2016. They made their first red carpet appearance at the Cannes Film Festival in 2017, a few months after which Phoenix announced that he and Mara were living together in the Hollywood Hills. They subsequently announced their engagement in July 2019.