Last week I dusted off my idea book for for this blog and my newspaper section; I was looking for 2008 features. One idea I've been chewing on since early last year was a piece called Rethinking Renfro, a re-examination of the under-appreciated actor Brad Renfro, whose work I've admired without actually knowing it. Looks like that piece won't be running in its original form: Renfro, at the ripe ol' age of 25, died this morning in Los Angeles.No word on the cause of death, but you don't have to venture far to nab an accurate guess. It's no big shock that he's died (I called Layne Staley's death years before it happened), especially since the young actor was living a hard life on hard drugs, but now that it's happened it's still a shock nonetheless. The leads of the stories announcing his death are dropping one title more than others: The Client, in which Renfro landed his big debut, as John Grisham's troubled Southern hoodrat who witnesses a mob-tinted suicide. A solid movie, a good movie even, The Client cemented Renfro's career as the peculiar outsider, the troubled boy with a cold stare and a loner with an attitude. He seemed to perfect this character in Tart and Bully, both from 2001. These were the movies I saw that made me realize how talented the dearly departed was. Oh, and he was also in Ghost World, an entire movie about outcast losers. I probably don't even need to mention Apt Pupil, where he plays a normal kid who seeks out a Nazi criminal.
In any case, Renfro was a talented actor and he could have had his best work still in front of him. Drugs suck. They steal from us too many talented folks.
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