Brad Barron Renfro was born on July 25, 1982
in Knoxville, Tennessee. His parents got divorced when he was
six, and he now lives with his father, Mark, a blueprint worker,
and his grandmother, Joanne, a church secretary. At age 10, when
casting director Mali Finn and director Joel Schumacher were
looking for a "tough, savvy survivor" to play a lead
role in a screen adaptation of John Grisham's novel "The
Client," the Knoxville police led them to check out Brad
Renfro. Renfro had recently played the role of a drug dealer in a
school production done in conjunction with the DARE program.
Renfro, otherwise totally unexperienced in acting, made his
silver screen debut when "The Client" was released by
Warner Brothers in the summer of 1994. His first performance was
an outstanding one, and he co-starred with Academy Award winners
Susan Sarandon and Tommy Lee Jones. While "The Client"
was playing in theaters, Brad was already working on his second
project, a drama about a boy who befriends his neighbor who has
AIDS. The movie, "The Cure", was directed by Peter
Horton and co-starred Joseph Mazzello and Anabella Sciorra.
Renfro's performance as Erik received rave reviews and he won The
Hollywood Reporter's YoungStar award for Best Young Actor in a
Drama Film. Next for Brad was a Disney film version of the
classic Mark Twain novel The Adventures of Tom Sawyer.
"Home Improvement" star Jonathan Taylor Thomas was cast
as the mischevious Tom Sawyer, and Brad as his outcast friend
Huckleberry Finn. The film was released in December of 1995, with
Brad again turning in a stellar performance, this time in one of
American literatures' most classic characters. In 1996, Brad's
fourth film "Sleepers" was released. The film was the
controversial drama based on Lorenzo Carcaterra's nonfiction best
seller. In a star-filled cast, Renfro held his own as the younger
version of Brad Pitt's character. Also in "Sleepers",
which was a box-office hit, were Kevin Bacon, Robert De Niro,
Dustin Hoffman, and Jason Patric. Late in 1996, People Magazine
named Renfro one of the "30 Hottest Stars Under 30"; he
was the youngest entertainer to make the list. In 1997, Renfro
tried out an independent film in Joe Eszterhas'
semi-autobiographical "Telling Lies in America"
re-teeming Renfro with his "Sleepers" co-star Bacon.
The film premiered at the New York Film Festival in October of
1997 and received strong reviews. Late in 1997, Renfro made a
commercial for Capcom's video game "Resident Evil 2."
The thirty-second ad was only aired in Japan (where the game is
called "Biohazard 2") and directed by George Romero,
the commercial was the most expensive commercial ever made for a
Capcom video game. In 1998, Renfro's sixth motion picture,
"Apt Pupil", was released. The film was directed by
Bryan Singer and co-starred Ian McKellen. It was a chilling
psychological thriller based on a 1982 Stephen King novella of
the same name. Brad won the Toyko International Film Festival
award for Best Actor for "Apt Pupil," which as a film
won the Saturn Award for Best Horror Film. Renfro's other
interests are writing (he has written a number of short films and
writes poetry which he has referred to as "somewhat
demented"), playing the electric guitar which he is rather
proficient at, and he hopes to one day be able to direct films,
as well as learn to master cinematography. Future projects for
Renfro, who has chosen projects he feels are the best and most
challenging for someone his age rather than doing a number of
teen films, includes "Happy Campers."