Lol yeah it was the first thing that struck me in reading it was if you were such a close friend, you'd know how to spell Joaquin - and besides which, she's never made statements like this before, so why would she choose this particular forum in which to do it.
You asked what it was like being a River fan at the time he died? Awful! I was in Year 9 in High School - I think that's a Junior over in the US. I'd already seen all his movies that had been released, and was highly looking forward to whatever he was doing next. It was pre-internet for me, so I had no idea what he was doing, just knew that whatever movie he was doing would be great.
I found out about his death on the radio on the way to school and cried and cried and cried. My parents were social workers (as I am now!) and so I spent my life around addicts, and had been to many funerals of people who had overdosed. But for someone I admired and adored (in the way that only a 15 year old girl can! haha) to die of an overdose was a big shock, and also the first time I realized Hollywood is not as glamorous as I thought it was. My mother tried to calm me down and tell me that in Hollywood drugs and alcohol are free and that there are very few who are involved in the entertainment industry who haven't sampled them - and that addiction is very hard to understand, if he was even actually addicted - she reminded me that you can overdose on one drug the first time you ever even try it. None of her social working helped at that point, so she turned the car around, called the school and told them I wouldn't be in for the day, took me to the video store and rented every River movie they had, then took me home and we sat and watched all his movies eating ice-cream all day. I felt much better after that. She then suggested perhaps I write about how I felt, and decorate it with some of the hundreds of pictures I had on my wall - so I did that, and it made me feel even better.
I guess the worst part was the realization that your idol is human. I know a lot of teenagers I work with felt the same way when Heath Ledger died, although they were privy to more info than we were - due to the internet, and also I guess as Heath was an Aussie so we had more info in the media. It's sadness that someone you admire has died, and they won't be making any more movies, and you won't see any more pictures of them in the magazines. But also, that people then write horrible things about a person that you idolise. That's hard to deal with as a teenager. I guess it's hard to deal with at any age, although the older you get the less illusions you have about Hollywood and the media.
Now - I can honestly look back and say that his death taught me a lot. And it helped me realize a lot. I am friends now with a lot of people in the entertainment industry. My knowledge of their world (although they're pretty much Z-list celebrities! lol) has at times been an eye-opener. But River's death was a small part of why I do what I do now, and why I deliberately make myself available for actors/singers etc to talk to me about their world, and to make sure they're educated on different drugs and what they can actually do to you. Seriously, you'd be surprised how many people think that a lot of the party drugs (like ecstacy and the likes) are "safe" and "not addictive". Also, I understand that just because a person is not an addict doesn't mean that they're not going to make choices that aren't wise in the heat of the moment. So being a fan of his, at the age I was when he died, forced me to really think about my own life, and what I give back to this world.
And as a fan - I can say, I'm grateful for the art he left behind. What a gift and a ray of light that man was to this world. He gave back so much in his short life.
Even the fact that he has fans that become fans post-mortem is a huge thing! Imagine having that amount of influence in the world! What a gift he was.