He became headline news for scrapes with the law, but young Brad Renfro, who appears in this month's indie Bully, insists he's done with his wayward ways.
________________________________________
Brad Renfro is only 19, but he has already garnered one accolade that his famous costars, which include Ian McKellan (Apt Pupil), Robert De Niro (Sleepers) and Susan Sarandon (The Client), will probably never receive. He's had a page on a Web site dedicated solely to the celebration of his naked torso.
"Is that what I've become, a piece of meat?" Renfro wonders, when I tell him I spent a good five minutes earlier today perusing the Brad Renfro Shirtless Gallery on an Internet fan site. The Knoxville, Tennessee, native takes a swig of Coke in the lobby of L.A.'s trendy W Los Angeles hotel and laughs. "I guess it's quite flattering, but you'll see--I'm not quite the cheeseball you think."
Few in Hollywood think Brad Renfro is a cheeseball. He's generally considered a talented young actor whose career seems to be picking up (he's appearing in three films this year--_Bully, Deuces Wild_ and Ghost World) despite personal problems that followed on the box-office disappointment of 1998s Apt Pupil. Renfro has been arrested twice, after all--in 1998 for driving under the influence of marijuana (cocaine was also found), and last year, when he and a friend tried to steal a 45-foot yacht from a Florida harbor. "I do have a bad reputation," Renfro admits, in a laid-back Tennessee drawl, "but I think most of the time when folks meet me, they don't have too many bad things to say about me."
"Regarding the yacht thing," I say as gingerly as possible, "is it true that you forgot to untie the boat from the dock before attempting to take off?"
"Yeah," says Renfro, with a nervous laugh.
"Aw, come on! Put two and two together. It was a joke, a joke that went very sour. I'm not that ignorant."
"How was your mug shot?"
"I was quite pleased with it," he says with a smile. "I was beefier then. I beefed up for Bully so I could kick ass."
In Bully, Renfro plays a real-life Florida teen named Marty Puccio, who, along with a group of friends (played by Bijou Phillips and Rachel Miner, among others), brutally murdered Bobby Kent (Nick Stahl), the young man who'd been tormenting them for years. "This movie is fucked up," says Renfro of the violence-drenched drama, the latest from Kids director Larry Clark. "But I'm extremely proud of it."
After Bully, Renfro will hit screens with Stephen Dorff and Fairuza Balk in Deuces Wild, a drama about rival street gangs set in 1950s Brooklyn from director Scott Kalvert (The Basketball Diaries). Moviegoers will also see Renfro in the adaptation of the comic book Ghost World from director Terry Zwigoff (Crumb). He plays Josh, the charmer who comes between two friends (Thora Birch and Scarlett Johansson) who are bonded by bitterness.
"I just saw Deuces Wild," I tell Renfro, "and I swear, it must have the highest budget for bruise makeup in the history of Hollywood."
"If you were in that movie, you got the shit beat out of you at least once, whether you were a guy or a girl," says Renfro, whose make-out scene with Balk in a swimming pool is sure to delight the fans of his shirtless Web site. "If you like ass-whupping and you like leather, this is your film."
"I loved how they shot Dorff in slow-motion like he was the ultimate badass," I remark. "Isn't he, like, 5'5"?"
"No ass-whupping respect for Dorff, huh?" Renfro says with a laugh. "Well, we love him. He's good folk."
As that turn of phrase suggests, no matter how many 5-star hotels he crashes in, Renfro will always be a Tennessee boy at heart. When he's not shooting, he can be found in Knoxville, playing blues guitar in his modest two-bedroom house or floating down the Little Pigeon River on a raft he bought at Wal-Mart. As for L.A., he loves the occasional small dose. "Ya gotta get a little glitter up in ya for about a week," says Renfro. "Then you gotta fuckin' run."
Hollywood came knocking on Renfro's Tennessee door when, at age 10, he so impressed D.A.R.E. officers he'd worked with on a school antidrug production that they referred him to famed casting director Mali Finn. At the time, Finn was combing the country for a boy to play opposite Susan Sarandon in Joel Schumacher's thriller The Client. "I auditioned at the Radisson in Knoxville," recalls Renfro, who had little prior acting experience, "and I just did what I always do. I just try to believe what I'm doing."
After The Client hit big, the 12-year-old Renfro, who'd been raised by his grandmother since his parents divorced when he was five, began to work steadily in big-studio films such as Tom and Huck and the ensemble Sleepers, in which he played the younger version of Brad Pitt's character.
"What's the most trouble you ever got into in school before you dropped out?" I ask. Renfro cracks a sly grin and replies, "I shouldn't be telling you this, but I fired up a marijuana cigarette in the school parking lot in front of the head administrator and got expelled." Finishing off his Coke and balancing the can on a nearby ashtray, he adds, "I don't smoke anymore. It's funny, man. Most kids my age are just now getting into the party scene and I'm over that shit. I don't go out and get arrested anymore. The most extravagant thing I do these days is play golf. I'm like an old man."
"Do you think your past problems cost you parts?" I ask.
"I'm sure they have," he replies. "But I've never had any kind of flak while filming a movie. I haven't missed a day of work or been late in my life."
Renfro has seen other actors cause set difficulties, though: "The wackiest thing was this one actor got bitten by his old lady and caught gangrene and it shut down production for two weeks."
"If I guess who it was, will you tell me I'm right?" I ask, digging out his list of credits. "Kevin Bacon from Telling Lies in America? Dustin Hoffman from Sleepers? Oh, I know. Jonathan Taylor Thomas from Tom and Huck!"
Just as I think Renfro is this close to giving up the goods, a sweet-looking young woman with strawberry blonde pigtails approaches. Renfro introduces her as Jenny, his girlfriend of one month. She's an architecture student at the University of Tennessee he met through a mutual friend. I ask Brad if Jenny knew he was famous before they spoke.
"I don't think so," says Brad, taking her hand.
"Yes, I did," corrects Jenny. "But it wasn't like, 'Hey, I remember you from Tom and Huck.'"
As I walk the couple to the elevator, a buxom blonde recognizes Brad and gives him a wave. He smiles shyly. "You seem to have friendly fans," I note.
"For the most part," says Renfro. "One time I was recognized on an airplane and the guy said, 'Aren't you that fucker that tried to steal that yacht?'"
________________________________________
Dennis Hensley interviewed Patricia Velasquez for the May issue of Movieline.