Rooney Mara, 38, is pregnant with her second child alongside fiancé Joaquin Phoenix. She showcased her growing baby bump in a long black dress at the premiere of La Cocina during the Berlin Film Festival in Germany on Friday evening.
Mara and Phoenix, 49, who got engaged in 2019 after meeting in 2012 on the set of the sci-fi drama Her, are already parents to son River, born in 2020.
River’s name honors Phoenix’s late brother, who passed away at 23 on Oct. 31, 1993, from an overdose. He was known for his roles in Stand By Me, Running on Empty, and My Own Private Idaho.
The news of Mara and Phoenix’s baby was disclosed by Victor Kossakovsky, a Russian filmmaker who collaborated with Phoenix on the documentary Gunda, during the Zurich Film Festival in September 2020.
“He just got a baby, by the way,” Kossakovsky announced. “A beautiful son called River.”
Neither Mara nor Phoenix publicly acknowledged the pregnancy during their rare red carpet appearances earlier that year, notably at the Golden Globes in January 2020 and the Oscars a month later.
Despite their private nature regarding their relationship and parenthood, Mara shared that becoming a mother to River had “opened her heart” while celebrating her first Mother’s Day in May 2021.
“At a time when I’m experiencing motherhood for the first time, Mother’s Day holds a profound significance. Raising our baby, River, has profoundly transformed my life, instilling within me a sense of hope and a heightened determination to foster a world characterized by compassion and sustainability,” wrote Mara in a heartfelt letter penned for Farm Sanctuary’s Mother’s Day campaign.
Years later, during an appearance on the LaunchLeft podcast, Mara spoke candidly about raising her son with Phoenix.
“It feels like a creative household, we’re constantly talking about creative things,” she said.
“It doesn’t feel like a two-actor house because I didn’t work for the first three and a half years we were together. Basically, since we’ve been together, I only worked one or two times and one was really small and short.”
