Stand By Me
Having broken into show biz with TV's Seven Brides for Seven Brothers that ran during the 1982-83 season, River Phoenix would follow up with his feature-film debut as a somewhat bookworm-ish kid in Explorers (1985). But it would be the huge box-office success and eventual cult following of Stand By Me in in 1986, based on a Stephen King novella, that would launch the young actor's appeal into the stratosphere.
He would follow the success of that film with a turn in The Mosquito Coast (1986) in which he starred with Harrison Ford as the son of a man anxious to take his family back to a primitive life. Set in the jungles of the South Atlantic, the film's plot carried remarkable similarities to River Phoenix's atypical upbringing, having been reared in a log cabin in rural Oregon. But River accepted his rising star reluctantly, happy that he could help his family by bringing home a paycheck.
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