“The biggest difficulty, was selling myself the whole plot,” says Phoenix.  “Being the son of Russian spies is far-fetched for me, but that’s because I’m me.  It was hard to adjust to that. Another challenge was the transition the character has to make from being a kid with a really decent life, a kid who feels very secure and dreams of becoming an air force pilot, into someone who has the rug pulled right out from under him. I had to evolve from a real happy-go-lucky guy into someone who's torn between his loyalty to his family, his conscience and duty to his country."

                                                River Phoenix – SKY September 1988

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Want to know a little bit about River’s costar in Little Nikita, Sidney Poitier?  Well here’s an excerpt from just one of the web sites I have listed below which talks about this awesome man:

“In an age of Spike Lee retrospectives, Denzel Washington blockbusters, and Magic Johnson multiplexes, it is perhaps easy to forget the pioneering impact Sidney Poitier's career has had on American culture. For 20 years, beginning in the early '50s, he was the top and virtually sole African-American film star--the first black actor to become a hero to both black and white audiences. Poitier was also the first black actor to win a prestigious international film award (Venice Film Festival, Something of Value, 1957), the first to be nominated for a Best Actor Academy Award (The Defiant Ones, 1958), the first to star as a romantic lead (Paris Blues, 1961), the first to win the Oscar (Lilies of the Fields, 1963), the first to become the number one box office star in the country (1968), and the first to insist on a film crew that was at least 50 percent African-American (The Lost Man, 1969). Poitier also starred in the first mainstream movies to condone interracial marriages and permit a mixed couple to hug and kiss (Guess Who's Coming to Dinner, 1967) and to attack apartheid (The Wilby Conspiracy, 1975). The New York Times' Vincent Canby once pointed out: "Poitier does not make movies, he makes milestones."

American Masters – Sidney Poitier - don’t forget to watch the video

The Kennedy Center Honors – Sidney Poitier