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Todd Williamson/Getty Images for People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals
"My parents were never negligent," he told November's Vanity Fair of spending his early years in Venezuela with a sect of the Children of God. In 1977, mom Heart Phoenix and the late John Lee Phoenix, patriarch to Joaquin and his four siblings, received a message from leadership detailing a new practice that would use sex to gain followers.
"They got some letter, or however it came, some suggestion of that, and they were like, 'F--k this, we're outta here,'" he detailed to the mag. "I think they were idealists, and believed that they were with a group who shared their beliefs, and their values. I think they probably were looking for safety, and family. Leaving a country that had assassinated a president and any number of civil rights leaders within a few f--king years, which is so hard for me to fathom, right?"