Yet one lawyer who deals frequently with insurance issues points out that all kinds of deals can be made for a superstar, like daily drug testing or furnishing a sober companion, but "as someone's star begins to fall, there's a lot less will to justify the hoops."
A key break
BRAD RENFRO'S whole career started, improbably enough, because as an 11-year-old fifth-grader he'd been difficult in a Drug Abuse Resistance Education class taught by a retired policeman. "He was absolutely your problem child," says Dennis Bowman. "The very first day, I kicked him out of class." Bowman grew to like Renfro, but "he was still a piece of work as far as being out of control."
By many accounts, he came from a troubled background. His dad, a factory worker, and his mom split up when he was a toddler, and his mom deposited him on the Knoxville inner-city steps of his paternal grandmother. Says Bowman, "The grandmother was trying her best to raise a kid who was taking advantage of the situation and creating a lot of stress on her."
At the time, the late casting director Mali Finn was conducting a search for a kid to star in "The Client," the movie version of the John Grisham legal thriller about a Southern trailer-park kid who winds up embroiled in a Mafia hit. "We wanted that kid in the principal's office. That endearing, mischievous boy that may be lying to you, may not be telling you the truth, but you're still charmed by him," says casting director Emily Schweber, Finn's associate at the time. When one of Finn's letters describing their search arrived at the Knoxville Police Department, Bowman immediately thought of Renfro.
After auditioning him in her hotel room, Finn called Schweber and said, "I found him." Renfro and his grandmother later flew to California to screen-test. They'd never been on a plane or stayed in a hotel.
"He was really fun, really charming, a little bit wild, and amazing in the scenes. Where he learned how to do this, I don't know. Some kids really enjoy role-playing and acting," says Schweber. "He had a lot of energy but sometimes he did have dark moods."
Both Finn and Joel Schumacher later called J.J. Harris, who now manages such stars as Charlize Theron, to check out their child lead. Harris flew to the North Carolina set to watch Renfro work and was charmed. "You just wanted to take care of this boy. He was a gorgeous little boy. Rough-and-tumble. Very self-aware," she says. "He'd say things like 'Nobody can put up with me 'cause I'm too hot to handle.' " Adds Harris, "He was just obviously screaming for someone to establish some kind of boundaries for him, something that never happened in his life."
