He was definitely unproven as an adult actor, and was also in the midst of the typical career slump when he died; The period of moving out of teenage roles into leading adult roles is difficult. This had a great deal to do with him passing up generic high-profile roles in favour of scripts he found interesting but which went nowhere in practice. Without which, his profile would have been greater at the time of his passing but his still-standing credibility among young actors for the way in which he chose roles would be less.
To compare Phoenix to Cobain is redundant on a few levels. For one, an actor will rarely be as influencial in life or death as a musician based on medium. Musicians put themselves out there, actors do not. Any musician worth their salt, like Cobain, will be authentic in their presentation of themselves and their work will come from them. There is no standard to attain, individuality is key. The audience knew Cobain through his own words, and music rarely becomes 'dated' or stops being played one day.
Unlike film.
Also, there is the fact that when alive, Cobain was already being credited with single-handedly changing the culture, regardless of how misinformed that idea was.
Phoenix was never going to have the status of Cobain, but he was on his way to proving he was owed a place in his industry, and for a lot of insiders already had. It was Phoenix's promise as an adult actor that was his lasting legacy, and no one has ever been in any dispute that he had the chops to make it work. Even now, young actors credit him with being an influence on their own work and careers. Obviously the most prominent of recent times is James Franco who, like Emilie Hirsch, sites Idaho and Phoenix in it as the reason he decided to become an actor, and he felt this to the extent that he spent his own money going back through the scraps to make his own homage to the actor.
Phoenix is attached to a period in time where the philosophies he preached and the way he chose to navigate his career was not the norm of the greedy 80s, and he's attached to a period where the cooler starts of generation X were lost in moral dilemmas and high profile drug use. He has a place, it doesn't touch Cobain's 'iconic' status but he is infamously the movie counter-part. More alluring now to the hipster masses because he's under the radar.
It's like, how much more black could this be? and the answer is none. None more black.
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