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Brad Renfro

Brad Renfro’s arrival in movies was anything but conventional. Born in Knoxville, Tennessee, in 1982, he had no acting experience or training when casting director Mali Finn discovered him at age ten. Finn was searching for an unknown Tennessee boy to play Mark Sway in Joel Schumacher’s adaptation of John Grisham’s The Client, and Renfro was chosen after a nationwide search involving 5,000 boys. That first role established the quality that would define much of his screen work: Renfro could play young without seeming sheltered. He brought a wary, streetwise edge to characters pushed into situations beyond their years, making him a natural fit for emotionally demanding material. After The Client became one of 1994’s top-grossing films, he played Huckleberry Finn in Tom and Huck and appeared in The Cure, a performance that earned him Young Star and Young Artist awards. Renfro continued taking on complicated roles rather than settling into an easy version of child stardom. In Barry Levinson’s Sleepers, he played the younger version of Brad Pitt’s character. He followed that with Telling Lies in America and the lead in Bryan Singer’s Apt Pupil, for which he received the Best Actor award at the Tokyo International Film Festival and a Saturn Award nomination. His later filmography moved across independent movies, dark dramas and youth comedies. In 2001 alone, he appeared in Ghost World, Bully, Happy Campers and Tart. American Girl and The Jacket followed, along with a 2006 appearance on Law & Order: Criminal Intent. He also completed work on The Informers. Renfro’s work was not confined to film and television. He was associated with music and screenwriting and appeared in music videos for 10 Years’ “Wasteland” and N.E.R.D’s “Provider.” Across a career that ran from an untrained childhood debut to increasingly adult material, Renfro remained most compelling when a role called for toughness complicated by vulnerability.