The days of giving and receiving Valentines Day gifts are over far too soon for 25-year-old actor Brad Renfro. Renfro was found dead in his Los Angeles County home on Tuesday, January 15, 2008. The cause of death has not yet been determined, but an autopsy could be conducted as early as Wednesday.
Renfro’s biggest role was his first, cast at the age of 10 in Joel Schumacher’s adaptation of the John Grisham novel, The Client, which starred Susan Sarandon as a lawyer who takes on a case for the 10-year-old client played by Renfro. His early success led to a role a year later in Tom and Huck, a retelling of two of Mark Twain’s most famous American novels.
However, while the movie roles kept rolling in, Renfro’s career kept getting more obscure as the level and quality of the movies in which he was cast declined. His career enjoyed a brief upswing in 2001, when he appeared in the indy movie, Ghost World. However, although he was able to keep working, none of the roles that followed were as well-received.
At the time of his death, he was involved in two movies that were incomplete; The Informers and Joe the Engineer. It is not known at this time whether his performances will be integrated into the final cuts of those films, or if his death will spur directors to recast his roles in those films, and reshoot completed scenes.
The actor allegedly struggled with drugs and alcohol, but media sources are quoting his lawyer, Richard Kaplan, as saying Renfro was working hard in recent months to stay clean.
A moment of silence, please.
