Rooney Mara and Joaquin Phoenix in 2020 VALERIE MACON / AFP
Joaquin Phoenix has sparked rumors that he may have quietly exchanged vows with Rooney Mara.
During the Sunday, September 29, episode of the “Talk Easy” podcast hosted by writer and filmmaker Sam Fragoso, Phoenix, 49, labeled Mara, 39, his “wife.”
Phoenix and Fragoso had been discussing Phoenix’s 2020 Best Actor Oscars acceptance speech for his work in 2019’s Joker when Phoenix revealed he had found inspiration for his words through “talking with my mom and my wife.”
The Joker: Folie à Deux actor then expanded on how he prepared his acceptance speech should he win the Oscar, referring to Mara, who announced on February 29 that she was expecting the couple’s second child, by her first name.
Rooney Mara and Joaquin Phoenix have kept their romance relatively private since they were first linked in 2016, but their flame has still burned bright. The Joker star and his fiancée first crossed paths on the set of Spike Jonze’s 2012 flick Her. Looking back on his initial interactions with Mara, who played his ex-wife […]
“Rooney was like, ‘That’s what you should say’,” Phoenix told Fragoso.
The couple, who share a son, River, born in 2020, got engaged in July 2019. The pair had dated for several years after reconnecting on the set of 2018’s Mary Magdalene where Mara played the film’s title character alongside Phoenix, who portrayed Jesus. Mara and Phoenix appeared together in the 2013 film Her, although it is unclear when they first met.
Phoenix told Vanity Fair in an interview published on October 1, 2019, and printed in the magazine’s November 2019 issue, that he had thought Mara “despised” him during their time together on the set of Her. He told the outlet that he later realized Mara was “just shy” and liked him.
“She’s the only girl I ever looked up on the internet,” he told the outlet. “We were just friends, email friends. I’d never done that. Never looked up a girl online.”
Fast-forward to 2024 and a source told Us Weekly exclusively in February that the couple were “ecstatic” to be welcoming a second child into their family.
While River may seem like an unusual baby name, it’s become quite popular in Hollywood. When Joaquin Phoenix and Rooney Mara welcomed their first child in September 2020, the couple decided to name their son River to honor the Oscar winner’s late brother, River Phoenix, who died in 1993 at age 23 of a drug […]
“Rooney and Joaquin love being parents,” a source told Us at the time. “They’re a team and are really relishing this journey together.”
Mara debuted her baby bump at the Berlin International Film Festival premiere of La Cocina on February 16 while posing for photos on the event’s red carpet.
Of the couple’s first child, River, whose name nods to Phoenix’s late brother, River Phoenix, a source told Us in May 2021 that the youngster has changed the couple’s lives.
“River has enhanced their lives more than they’ve ever imagined and has brought them closer together,” the source said at the time. “They’re a very private couple and want River to have a normal, healthy upbringing.”
