John Lee Bottom, the founder of a landscape gardening company who is best known for being the father of Joaquin Phoenix, an actor who won an Academy Award for his work.
He was married with Arlyn “Heart” Bottom (née Dunetz), who was an executive secretary at NBC and whose connection to an agent provided her children with acting work.

Full name | John Lee Bottom |
Date of birth | NA |
Age | NA |
Zodiac sign | NA |
Famous As | Father of Joaquin Phoenix |
Place of birth | United States of America |
Nationality | American |
Ethnicity | Caucasian |
Religion | Catholic |
Height | NA |
Weight | NA |
Sexual orientation | Straight |
Marital status | Married |
Wife | Arlyn “Heart” Bottom |
Parents | Robert Merrill Bottom and Beulah Ingram |
Children | 3 |
Who Are John Lee Bottom Parents?
- John Lee Bottom was born to Robert Merrill Bottom and Beulah Ingram.
- During his childhood, he lived in a city in the United States where his sons, River Phoenix and Joaquin Phoenix, achieved fame.
- Although there is still much unknown about him.
- His high school education, however, appears to have been completed.
- He was able to provide a high level of education for his sons, despite his lack of completing high school himself showcasing his intelligence and determination as a parent.
- John Lee was a family man who was married and had three children.
- He had lovely and well-known children through his marriage to Arlyn Phoenix.
- After meeting in California, the two started dating soon after.
- On September 13th, 1969, they exchanged wedding vows.
- Within the first year of their marriage, they began their missionary work, traveling throughout Mexico, South America, and the U.S. to share their teachings.
- There is no clear explanation for why the couple divorced.
- After that, in 2001, his ex-wife married another man, Jeffrey Weisberg.
- After being diagnosed with cancer, he spent a significant amount of time fighting it.
- Despite his battle with cancer, he found the strength to move on with his life and live his best life.
John Lee Bottom Ethnicity
- John Lee Bottom Jodean was a Catholic from Fontana, California, and was of English, German and French ancestry.
- His maternal grandfather, Meyer Dunetz, was Russian Jewish and his maternal grandmother, Margit Lefkowitz, was Hungarian Jewish; they were both Ashkenazi Jews who resided in New York City.
- Phoenix’s parents met when his mother was hitchhiking in California and got married less than a year after meeting.

John Lee Bottom Personal Life
- John Lee Bottom and his wife Arlyn, joined the religious cult called Children of God and started traveling throughout South America and Puerto Rico in the Caribbean as missionaries for the cult, where the next two children were born, soon after the second child was born.
- They eventually grew disillusioned with Children of God and left in 1977, being opposed to the cult’s increasingly distorted rules, particularly the practice of flirty fishing.
- The fifth child was born in Florida where the family settled for a while.
- It was also around this time they legally adopted the surname Phoenix, inspired by the mythical bird that rises from its own ashes, symbolizing a new beginning.
- When Phoenix was three, he and his older siblings witnessed fish being stunned as “they were throwing them against the side of the boat.”
- This act made the whole family convert to veganism.
- He also began calling himself “Leaf”, having been inspired by spending time outdoors raking leaves and desiring to have a nature-related name like his siblings.
- Leaf became the name he used before changing it back to his birth name Joaquin at the age of fifteen.
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