Death Spiral

"He wasn't good at that going-home bit, going back to his life" after the social activity of a movie set, adds Guy Ferland. As an associate producer on "The Client," Ferland would help keep Renfro healthily occupied in off hours with activities like trips to an amusement park. He later helped get him into a Knoxville Montessori school (Renfro dropped out within weeks) and directed him in "Telling Lies in America." "I'm not sure Brad really liked being alone. There was always some party, whatever he needed to do to keep the energy going."

Renfro quit J.J. Harris around 2001 and never spoke to her again, although he continued to work on smaller films, little seen, sometimes low-rent indies such as "Deuces Wild" and "The Job."

In 2006, he spent 10 days in jail for DUI and heroin possession. "He was very conscious that he was alone in the world and didn't have the kind of family and support system that others had," says his former lawyer Blair Berk.

As recently as last June, a judge declared he'd violated his probation by not enrolling in a long-term drug-treatment program, which he subsequently did. "We thought he turned the corner over the last six months. He'd been clean," says another of his lawyers, Richard Kaplan.

What caused Renfro's death is still unknown. The police have not released autopsy results. Apparently, Renfro had been drinking heavily the night before, and a Los Angeles roommate found him dead in his bed. Two days earlier, he'd had an obscene tattoo applied to his chest.

Even when plunging into the darkness, Renfro always tried to maintain his bad-boy bravado. On his MySpace page, on which he last posted in 2005, he described his career highlights and wrote, "When I started I didn't have any experience but now I would say I'm your typical Marlon Brando. . . . My friends sometimes say that I have the attitude of Eminem on Prozac but at the same time I also have a caring but loving side 2 me as well. . . ."

Bowman, who still lives in Knoxville, remembers telling his wife when Renfro landed "The Client," "This will be either the best thing that happened to Brad Renfro or the worst." In retrospect, Bowman's not sure that Hollywood made any difference in Renfro's fate. Neither is anyone else. "I think he was troubled before he got to Hollywood," says Singer, who went on to launch the "X-Men" franchise. "I think that when there's enough drugs involved it has less to do with the pressures of Hollywood and more to do with the pressures of life."

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rachel.abramowitz@latimes.com

Times staff writer Christopher Goffard contributed reporting.