Actor Brad Renfro, former child star of such films as The Client and Tom and Huck who had battled drug abuse in recent years, was found dead in Los Angeles on January 14 at the age of 25.
A Los Angeles county coroner’s spokesperson said Renfro’s cause of death was under investigation.
”I can confirm that Brad Barron Renfro is deceased,” coroner’s spokesperson Ed Winter said. ”He was found unresponsive in a residence … Paramedics responded and he was pronounced dead at 9am [local time].”
The celebrity website TMZ.com reported that Renfro, who pleaded guilty in 2006 to charges of trying to buy heroin, just months after a picture of his arrest ran on the front page of the Los Angeles Times, had just finished filming a movie with actors Winona Ryder and Billy Bob Thornton.
Renfro made his film debut at the age of 12 as a young boy who knew too much in the 1994 John Grisham thriller The Client, starring Tommy Lee Jones and Susan Sarandon. The following year he earned notice for his role in The Cure.
After entering his guilty plea in February 2006, Renfro, who had a string of run-ins with the law, was ordered into a drug-treatment programme and placed on three years’ probation. — Reuters