BRAD RENFROBrad Renfro, who was found dead at his Los Angeles apartment on 15 January, 2008, began his film career as a promising child star and developed into anactor with unfulfilled potential.
He made his movie debut in the Oscar-nominated thriller The Client (1994) at the age of just 12 and was a regular face on the screen during his adolescence, appearing in more than 20 films.
Brad Barron Renfro was born in Knoxville, Tennessee, on 25 July, 1982. For most of his youth he was an only child (later gaining a half-sister) and estranged from his parents - he was raised by his grandmother, Joanne Renfro, a church secretary after his parents divorced when he was five.
It was this tough upbringing that led to his casting in The Client."I wanted an intelligent kid who’s a tough and savvy survivor … a kid who understood in the marrow of his psyche what it was like to grow up too soon," said Joel Schumacher who scoured the Southern states for the right actor.
The movie, based on a John Grisham novel and starring Tommy Lee Jones and Susan Sarandon, was one of the biggest box office successes of 1994 and led to Brad being named as Hollywood Reporter magazine's ‘Young Star’ of the year, as well as one of People’s ‘Top 30 Under 30’.
He then starred in the coming-of-age movie The Cure (1995) about two boys’ journey down the Mississippi river to find an AIDS cure for one of them (played by Jurassic Park’s Joseph Mazzello). The Mississippi would also feature in his next role, Huckleberry Finn, in the Disney film Tom and Huck (1995).
He played Brad Pitt’s younger self in the star-studded prison drama Sleepers (1996). Over thenext years he would work with some of Hollywood’s top names, including Kevin Bacon, Drew Barrymore and Ian McKellen.
Developing into a fine adult actor, Mr Renfro starred in high school revenge film Bully and with Thora Birch and Scarlett Johansson in the Oscar-nominated Ghost World (both 2001).
He was at his best, as he had been at the very start of his career, playing characters with turbulent lives existing on the outskirts of society and retained a passionate and appreciative cult following.
Shortly before his death he had fininshed filming The Informers with Winona Ryder and Mickey Rourke.
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