Brad Renfro dead at 25

by Kaitlin | January 16, 2008 at 10:23 am | 1554 views | 5 comments

As a peer and someone who grew up watching Renfro take still, chilling turns in films like The Client, Apt Pupil and Ghost World, I can't help but feel saddened by this news. In a New York Times piece about the actor first published in 1994, director Joel Schumacher (who helmed The Client) spoke about the actor's initial discovery:

He found Mr. Renfro, then all of 10, through the Knoxville Police Department. He had a reputation as a troublemaker and had recently played a drug dealer in a school production of an antidrug play. The film’s casting director, Mali Finn, said she intended to let Mr. Renfro audition for 10 to 15 minutes, but ended up letting the tape run for an hour. Mr. Schumacher told The Times that when he viewed the tape, “I was struck by the maturity and sadness of his eyes,” adding: “I couldn’t believe a 10-year-old that good-looking and smart who had a difficult life could actually act on the screen. It was too good to believe.”

Renfro's appeal for girls his own age who watched him get into scrapes with the law, abuse drugs and alcohol and generally misbehave is obvious--he was a bad boy, our generation's River Phoenix or James Dean. And now, he shares not only their reputation, but their brevity. Renfro's body was discovered by his girlfriend Tuesday morning. There's no suspicion of foul play.

In the profile published before “The Client,” opened, the 12-year-old actor was asked how appearing in the film would change his life. “I’ll always be Brad Renfro, born on July 25, 1982,” he said. “Nothing’s going to change that. It won’t be any different.”

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Brian A Kennedy

at 10:25 on January 16th, 2008

good stuff:

Great stuff, KF.

jordan

at 10:28 on January 16th, 2008

good stuff:

What a waste. Very saddening indeed for his fans, friends and family-- and for every Brad Renfro, how many other, less famous people are also selling out their potential?

Miyspirit

at 12:13 on January 16th, 2008

good stuff:

Kaitlin, I like this story. It's good stuff...sad ending!

PEP

at 13:44 on January 16th, 2008

good stuff:

Kaitlin, I like this story. It's good stuff.

I still mourn the incandescense (sp?) of River Phoenix (James Dean was before my time, his photos don't appeal to me at all). Oh, the talent he had. I watch movies I've seen often before, just to see that spark, the thing that goes beyond the ordinary.

And we always get back to the same themes in these losses (John Belushi too): drugs, drugs, drugs, lack of consistent values, lack of grounding in reality, thinking that the life of a Hollywood star puts one above gravity. Again, we see someone with so much talent who literally destroys himself with the evil that is the drug culture.

Drugs kill, quickly or slowly. Rich or poor. They kill the soul, the mind.

Everyone who does a "little" drugs, for parties, for whatever reason, IMHO, contributes to the culture that in essence, killed Brad Renfro. There's a moral complicity, and the more that people do a "wink wink, nudge nudge" about their use of drugs, or their friends' use of drugs, the more power they give to the demons that destroy.

My ethnic culture believes "we are all related." When we lose a talent, a special spirit, a human possibility, we all lose.