ARTICLE 3

(taken from U.S WEEKLY 2001 August)

TROUBLE IN MIND
HE MAY BE TALENTED AND CHARISMATIC, BUT BRAD RENFRO IS ALSO BRAZEN AND
ADMITTEDLY SELF DESTRUCTIVE. WILL HE BECOME A STAR OR JUST ANOTHER HOLLYWOOD
CASUALTY?
BY: MICHEAL KAPLAN

       At the poolside cafe of West Hollywood hotel, reputed bad boy Brad Renfro arrives promptly at the agreed-upon time of 12:30p.m.,looking relatively tame and carrying a 16-ounce bottle of orange juice. During dinner the night before at the trendy Eurochow, he turned down an offer of a cocktail in favor of ice water and ordered a salad tht looked as appetizing as a platter of wet cardboard.
      Considering Renfro's past--just 19, he's already been busted for pot and cocaine possession, underage drinking and attempting to steal a yacht(he would have sailed off with it had he and his friend not neglected to untie the mooring lines that connected it to the Fort Lauderdale, Florida, dock)--the straight-and-narrow demeanor is a bit of a surprise. 

But Renfro--now appearing in the darkly comic "Ghost World" and the teen sex-and-murder opus "Bully"--says he's trying to improve his habits along with his image. "I need to stop taking s--- for granted, to stop acting like a f---ing buffoon and to get serious",he says."Maybe I had been partying a little too much. But I've nipped that in the bud." His redemption, he claims, will come from the distance he puts between himself and Los Angeles, where he is currently promoting his movies. "If I moved out here to L.A., I would be nuts," says Renfro, who lives in Knoxville, Tennessee.

His grandmother raised him there after his parents divorced when he was 5. "I'd be the stereotypical Hollywood kid, hitting all the parties and s---."
   But that's nearly what did happen. After director Joel Schumacher discovered him at age 12 (a talent scout singled him out for his performance in a school play) and cast him in 1994's "The Client", opposite Susan Sarandon and Tommy Lee Jones, Renfro's carrer soared--he was praised for subsequent performances in "Apt Pupil", "The Cure", and "Sleepers". But with success came trouble. "I started doing drugs",Renfro says. "I've done everything in the book. I've eaten an ounce of mushrooms in a 24-hour period. I've done heroin. I like heroin. And I still have a few cocktails." Holding his bottle of orange juice up to the sunlight, he adds, "As a matter of fact, I'm drinking a little vodka right now."

   Renfro admits that his 1998 bust for drug possession in Knoxville might have aborted his fledgling career. "It was my first offense", he says, explaining why he was able to plea-bargain his sentence down to probation.
"They could have had me doing six months up in county. Jail sucks for anyone, but especially for a pretty boy like me".
  Yet the arrest carried other, more personal consequences. Knoxville had once been proud of its hometown boy--a plaque had gone up in his honor at the local multiplex. But after the drug bust, the plaque was unceremoniously removed. "It hurt", Renfro says. "People treat me like the bastard stepchild of Knoxville. I'd like to make myself feel better and say that they're jealous, but that's really not the case. Maybe they're ashamed of me becauseof my f---ing antics".
  Renfro undoes the top few buttons of his shirt to reveal a small cross tattooed on his chest. "My mother used to give me crucifixes, and I lost them; I won't lose this one," he says, adding that he has deep-seated Christian beliefs and travels with his own monogrammed Bible. "I try to read it every night before I go to bed. Basically it's about honesty."
  Suddenly, Renfro spots Ozzy Osbourne by the pool. As the weathered rock star passes the table, the actor chugs a shot of whiskey and jumps in Osbourne's path. "Ozzy",he says, "I am just a teenage wastrel actor who's had too much to drink. But I must throw myself at your feet."
  Osbourne looks alarmed and cranes his neck, perhaps searching for hotel security. He akwardly sidesteps Renfro, then says, "I've been there". As Osbourne escapes, Renfro announces that he has to leave too. "My life hasn't been a cakewalk," he says. "But it all comes down to what you do for
yourself. You f--- yourself up, son."
  Renfro gets into his waiting car, disappearing behind tinted glass. As the driver kicks the ignition, the rear window lowers a crack. "I don't mean to make you feel weird," he says. "I'm just afraid you will write bad about me. You're the last interview. I ain't doing no more publicity. Bad stuff."

Contributed by: Emily