Brad Renfro, the talented young actor whose body of film work had been blighted by his much publicized drug addictions over the years, died on January 15 at his Los Angeles home. His exact cause of death is still undetermined. He was only 25.

Born Brad Barron Renfro on July 25, 1982 in Knoxville, Tennessee, his acting experience was minimal at best, save for a few elementary school productions, when he was cast (after a national search) in the lead for Joel Schumacher's The Client (1994), co-starring Susan Sarandon and Tommy Lee Jones. As a young boy living on the run after overhearing a conversation about murder, Renfro received good reviews, and he proved himself a capable young actor in his next two outings: The Cure (1995), which despite Peter Horton's somewhat mawkish direction, Renfro still managed to give a good performance as a young boy who befriends a kid inflicted with AIDS. And he also made a suitably rambunctious Huckleberry Finn in the Disney produced Tom and Huck (also 1995).

He received his strongest accolades yet as a troubled young teenager who befriends an aging Nazi war criminal (Sir Ian McKellen) in Apt Pupil (1998); and later gave two rich interpretations of misguided youth - first as a boy who plots to murder a friend who's abusive to him in Larry Clark's Bully; and then as the hapless convenience store clerk Josh, in Terry Zwigoff's sublime youth comedy Ghost World playing opposite Scarlett Johansson and Thora Birch.

Sadly, all the gifts Renfro had as an actor was dimmed by his well-known drug problems, and after offering a last poignant performance as a recovering petty criminal in the short Coat Pockets (2005), Renfro didn't leave much more of a mark in the film world, just a regretful case of promise unfulfilled.

by Michael T. Toole