Brad Renfro

Born: 25 July 1982
Died: 15 January, 2008
Where: Knoxville, Tennessee, USA

The tragic star is probably best known for his debut aged just 12 in The Client and the indie movies Ghost World and Apt Pupil.

However, a troubled life scarred by drugs abuse and petty crime culminated in his early death aged just 25.

The son of a blueprint factory worker, Renfro was an only child who endured an unsettled childhood after his parents divorced when he was five.

He was discovered at the age of 12 by director Joel Schumacher and was immediately cast in his first major movie The Client in 1994.

Only a year later, critics showered the young actor with praise for his role in The Cure for which he won The Hollywood Reporter Young Star award.

Schumacher took the budding star under his wing and moved him from a public school to a Montessori school in Knoxville, Tennessee.

Renfro's next part was Huckleberry Finn opposite Jonathan Taylor Thomas' Tom Sawyer in Disney's Tom and Huck, and in the gritty drama Sleepers where he played Brad Pitt's character as a teenager.

In 1998, he was detained on suspicion of possession of marijuana and cocaine, and he struck a plea and agreed to be randomly tested for substance abuse for six months; if he remained clean, charges would not be pursued.

That same year he starred in Bryan Singer's critically acclaimed but underrated Apt Pupil as a youngster who draws out the guilty secret of his Nazi war criminal neighbour (Ian McKellen).

Offscreen, he was rarely out of the headlines, particularly after an incident in which he was ordered to pay $4,000 after trying to steal a yacht moored in Fort Lauderdale.

In 2001, he starred as Swain in the dark teen comedy Happy Campers, which was screened at Sundance, and also had the leading role of a troubled Florida teen who turns on his abusive friend in Larry Clarke's controversial Bully.

Renfro subsequently starred alongside Thora Birch in Ghost World and in Deuces Wild, opposite his contemporary Steven Dorff.

However, his personal problems continued and he was in trouble with the law again in 2002 when he was charged with public intoxication and driving without a license.

In 2004, he appeared in the thriller The Jacket and went on to star alongside James Marsden in the Mafia drama 10th & Wolf.

He had just completed the adaptation of Brett Easton Ellis' novel The Informers when he was found dead at his Los Angeles home.