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Actor Brad Renfro Found Dead in L.A. Home

TMZ broke the news this afternoon that Brad Renfro was found in his Los Angeles home this morning. The cause of death of Brad Renfro has not been determined, however, he had a history of drug abuse.

Brad Barron Renfro was born on July 25 of 1982 and was an American actor.

During his short life he was an actor in 14 movies, including Sleepers, Ghost World and this year The Informers. Wikipedia has the following about him.

Renfro was ten when he was discovered by Mali Finn, a casting director for Joel Schumacher, director of The Client. He played the title role in the film, adapted from a best-selling John Grisham novel, opposite Susan Sarandon and Tommy Lee Jones. The suspense/drama was one of the top-grossing films of 1994. Renfro went on to act in other films including 2001’s Ghost World and Bully and 2005’s The Jacket with Keira Knightley and Adrien Brody. He also played Huck Finn in Tom and Huck with Jonathan Taylor Thomas. In 1995, he won Hollywood Reporter’s “Young Star” award and was nominated as one of People magazine’s “Top 30 Under 30″. Renfro also appeared in “Watch”, an episode of Law & Order: Criminal Intent.

He was in the Japanese Biohazard 2 commercial, acting as Leon S. Kennedy, one of the game’s characters.

Personal life of Brad Renfro

Renfro was born in Knoxville, Tennessee, the son of Angela and Mark Renfro, who works in a blueprint factory. He was raised by his grandmother, Joanne Renfro, a church secretary. TMZ says Brad was having personal difficulties as his parents split recently and he was having a hard time to find guidance in the the treacherous movie industry in Hollywood.

Brad Renfro Dead At 25

Actor Brad Renfro, 25, was found dead in his Los Angeles home Tuesday morning (January 15). Although the circumstances of his death are currently unknown, the former child star had been plagued for nearly a decade by drug abuse and run-ins with the law.

Renfro was best known for a skyrocketing career that began with a central role in the 1994 John Grisham legal thriller “The Client,” a part he landed when he was 10 years old. In the years that followed, the Tennessee-born teen would continue to choose gritty, adult-oriented work in films like the Kevin Bacon drama “Telling Lies in America,” the critically acclaimed AIDS tale “The Cure,” and the high-wattage “Sleepers” (in which he played a young Brad Pitt).

As of Tuesday evening, the Los Angeles Times was reporting that although the cause of Renfro’s death had yet to be determined, there was no suspicion of foul play.

“Brad was a really gifted young man,” his former attorney Blair Berk reportedly said. “It is a tragedy all the way around.”

According to the newspaper, Los Angeles Police Lieutenant David Evans would not comment on rumors of a drug overdose.

In 1995, he won the Hollywood Reporter’s YoungStar award, was nominated as one of People magazine’s “Top 30 Under 30,” and won a Young Artist award for his role in “The Cure.”

Although the only straightforward family flick Renfro made during his adolescent years was the modest Disney success “Tom and Huck,” the actor found himself struggling with teen typecasting as the new millennium dawned. For all intents and purposes, his last mainstream starring role was in “Apt Pupil,” director Bryan Singer’s underperforming Nazi tale best remembered for a lawsuit involving child extras and a shower scene.

Renfro’s troubles became public in 1998, when he was charged with possession of cocaine and marijuana but avoided jail time. In a bizarre incident just a few years later, he was charged with attempting to steal a yacht in Florida. Renfro’s reported drug habit led to his getting picked up in a December 2005 sting operation on Los Angeles’ Skid Row as the actor attempted to buy heroin from an undercover officer; he would soon enter rehab. Just one month prior, Renfro had been charged with driving under the influence and driving with a suspended license.

Career-wise, Renfro would never fully recover from his post-”Pupil” substance-abuse troubles. The actor spent the rest of his Hollywood days in forgotten films like “Deuces Wild” and “American Girl,” or occasional supporting work in the Scarlett Johansson cult classic “Ghost World” and the Adrien Brody military flick “The Jacket.”

One of Renfro’s final acting appearances was in a recent episode of “Law & Order: Criminal Intent.” He had recently been filming “The Informers,” co-starring Winona Ryder and based on the Bret Easton Ellis novel of the same name; how that film will address Renfro’s passing is currently uncertain.

In the weeks to come, further details are expected to be revealed about Renfro’s untimely death. Sadly, what is certain is his inclusion on a list of young Hollywood deaths.

Brad Renfro

One of the hottest teen idols of the mid- to late ’90s, talented dramatic actor Brad Renfro has also garnered adult fans for building an impressive filmography that includes performances opposite some of Hollywood’s most respected actors. A native of Knoxville, TN, Renfro was raised by his grandmother following his parents’ divorce. He broke into movies at age ten, when he impressed an audience member during a D.A.R.E. (a national anti-drug organization promoted by local police departments) skit (he was playing a drug dealer). This unknown person recommended Renfro to a talent scout who was holding a national open casting call for a young man to play a traumatized boy who finds himself in the midst of a deadly homicide case in Joel Schumacher’s The Client (1994). Renfro, who had no training and no real acting experience, won the part and found himself working opposite such heavy hitters as Tommy Lee Jones, Susan Sarandon, Ossie Davis, and Mary-Louise Parker. Though such stellar company may have been daunting to others, Renfro held his own and earned positive reviews for his performance. He next played a new kid in town who befriends and decides to find a cure for an AIDS-afflicted boy (veteran child actor Joseph Mazzello) in Peter Horton’s heart-tugging The Cure (1995). In 1996, Renfro played Huck Finn to Jonathan Taylor Thomas’ Tom Sawyer in Disney’s The Adventures of Tom Sawyer and then essayed an abused boy (Brad Pitt played him as a vengeful adult) in Sleepers (1996). Since then, his career has continued to expand. In 1998, he starred opposite Ian McKellen as a high school student morbidly fascinated by Nazi atrocities who finds himself drawn to an elderly, sinister war criminal in Bryan Singer’s sophomore film Apt Pupil.

Timothy Olyphant Profile

Bearing the kind of sharp-eyed, vaguely sinister good looks that often get actors cast as charismatic drug dealers or murder suspects, Timothy Olyphant first impressed film audiences playing none other than the resident charismatic drug dealer of Doug Liman’s Go (1999). Born in Hawaii on May 20, 1968, Olyphant grew up in California. After attending the University of California, where he swam competitively, the actor made his professional debut in the Playwrights Horizons’ production of +The Monogamist, for which he won a Theatre World Award for Outstanding Debut Performance. Olyphant’s first film appearance came courtesy of a miniscule role in The First Wives Club (1996); somewhat more substantial work followed in 1997’s Scream 2, in which the actor was cast as one of Neve Campbell’s friends.

After a turn in When Trumpets Fade (1998), a critically acclaimed made-for-TV WWII drama, and a memorable guest-shot on an episode of Sex and the City, Olyphant gave a scene-stealing performance in Go, managing to stand out in an ensemble cast that included Sarah Polley, Katie Holmes, Taye Diggs, and Scott Wolf. His work caught the notice of more than one industry observer, and by the following year, the actor had a number of projects in the works. Included among them were The Broken Hearts Club, a comedy that cast Olyphant as a gay photographer; Gone in Sixty Seconds, which featured him as a detective on the trail of a car thief (Nicolas Cage); and Auggie Rose, a drama about assumed identity in which Olyphant played the ex-cellmate of a dead con man. In 2001, Olyphant would turn up in the tale of an aspiring singer who gets to live a dream, Rock Star.

Once touted as “the next big thing,” Olyphant’s stock seemed to drop after attaching himself to a string of duds, most notably the aforementioned Rock Star, Dreamcatcher, and A Man Apart, the latter two both released in 2003. Fortunately, the following year saw things looking up for the actor, with a starring role on the latest critically acclaimed weekly series from HBO, the Western Deadwood. Just a handful of weeks following the premiere of Deadwood, Olyphant could be seen on the big screen again with a supporting role in the teen sex comedy The Girl Next Door.

Russell Crowe Profile

Though perhaps best-known internationally for playing tough-guy roles in Romper Stomper (1993), L.A. Confidential (1997), and Gladiator (2000), New Zealand-born actor Russell Crowe has proven himself equally capable of playing gentler roles in films such as Proof (1991) and The Sum of Us (1992). No matter what kind of characters he plays, Crowe’s weather-beaten handsomeness and gruff charisma combine to make him constantly watchable: his one-time Hollywood mentor Sharon Stone has called him “the sexiest guy working in movies today.”

Born in Wellington, New Zealand, on April 7, 1964, Crowe was raised in Australia from the age of four. His parents made their living by catering movie shoots, and often brought Crowe with them to work; it was while hanging around the various sets that he developed a passion for acting. After making his professional debut in an episode of the television series Spyforce when he was six, Crowe took a 12-year break from professional acting, netting his next gig when he was 18. In film, he had his first major roles in such dramas as The Crossing (1990) and Jocelyn Moorhouse’s widely praised Proof (1991) (for which he won an Australian Film Institute award). He then went on to gain international recognition for his intense, multi-layered portrayal of a Melbourne skinhead in Geoffrey Wright’s controversial Romper Stomper (1992), winning another AFI award, as well as an Australian Film Critics award.

It was Sharon Stone who helped bring Crowe to Hollywood to play a gunfighter-turned-preacher opposite her in Sam Raimi’s The Quick and the Dead (1995). Though the film was not a huge box-office success, it did open Hollywood doors for Crowe, who subsequently split his time between the U.S. and Australia. In 1997, the actor had his largest success to date playing volatile cop Bud White in Curtis Hanson’s L.A. Confidential (1997). Following the praise surrounding both the film and his performance in it, Crowe found himself working steadily in Hollywood, starring in two films released in 1999: Mystery, Alaska and The Insider. In the latter, he gave an Oscar-nominated lead performance as Jeffrey Wigand, a real-life tobacco industry employee whose personal life was dragged through the mud when he chose to blow the whistle on his former company’s questionable business practices.

In 2000, however, Crowe finally crossed over into the public’s consciousness with, literally, a tour de force performance in Ridley Scott’s glossy Roman epic Gladiator. The Dreamworks/Universal co-production was a major gamble from the outset, devoting more than 100 million dollars to an unfinished script (involving the efforts of at least half a dozen writers), an untested star (stepping into a role originally intended for Mel Gibson), and an all-but-dead genre (the sword-and-sandals adventure). Thanks to an aggressive marketing campaign and mostly positive notices, however, the public turned out in droves the first weekend of the film’s release, and kept coming back long into the summer for Gladiator’s potent blend of action, grandeur, and melodrama — all anchored by Crowe’s passionate man-of-few-words performance.

Anticipation was high, then, for the actor’s second 2000 showing, the hostage drama Proof of Life. Despite — or perhaps because of — the widely publicized affair between Crowe and his co-star Meg Ryan, the film failed to generate much heat during the holiday box-office season, and attention turned once again to the actor’s star-making role some six months prior. In an Oscar year devoid of conventionally spectacular epics, Gladiator netted 12 nominations in February 2001, including one for its lead performer. While many wags viewed the film’s eventual Best Picture victory as a fluke, the same could not be said for Crowe’s Best Actor victory: nudging past such stiff competition as Tom Hanks and Ed Harris, Crowe finally nabbed a statue, affirming for Hollywood the talent that critics had first noticed almost ten years earlier.

Crowe’s 2001 role as real-life Nobel Prize-winning schizophrenic mathematician John Forbes Nash Jr. brought the actor back into the Oscar arena. Directed by Ron Howard and co-starring Jennifer Connelly, A Beautiful Mind was criticized for omitting the more sordid and unsightly details of Nash’s troubled marriage and decent into mental illness. Still, Crowe’s sensitive portrayal, coupled with Howard’s assured direction, put the actor back on the mountain of fame that he had previously conquered with Gladiator. A Beautiful Mind quickly vaulted past the 100-million-dollar mark as it took home Golden Globes for Best Picture, Supporting Actress, Screenplay, and Actor and racked up eight Oscar nominations, including a Best Actor nod for Crowe.

Crowe followed up A Beautiful Mind in 2003 by taking to the high-seas in the period-adventure Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World. A hit at the box-office, the film also recieved rave reviews and a number of Oscar nods, including one for Best Picture. His career momentum higher than ever, Crowe next starred in 2005’s Depression-era boxing drama Cinderella Man. Reteaming him with A Beautiful Mind’s director Ron Howard, the picture garnered Crowe more accolades from critics, and had people talking about another Oscar for the actor. While the Oscar nominations didn’t end up including his name, he soon followed up his performance with another dramatic role in Ridley Scott’s A Good Year.

Will Smith Profile

Given his formidable success in numerous arenas of the entertainment industry, the multi-talented Will Smith qualifies as an original “Renaissance man.” Although Smith initially gained fame as the rap star Fresh Prince prior to the age of 20, (with constant MTV airplay and blockbuster record sales), he cut his chops as an A-list Hollywood actor on the small and big screens in successive years, unequivocally demonstrating his own commercial viability and sturdy appeal to a broad cross section of viewers.

A Philadelphia native, Smith entered the world on September 25, 1968. The son of middle-class parents (his father owned a refrigeration company and his mother worked for the school board) and the second of four children, Smith started rapping from the age of 12, and earned the nickname “Prince” thanks to his ability to slickly talk his way out of trouble. Smith engendered this moniker as a household phrase when he officially formed the duo DJ Jazzy Jeff & the Fresh Prince, with fellow performer Jeff Townes in 1986. That team netted two Grammys (one for the seminal 1988 youth anthem “Parents Just Don’t Understand” and one for the 1991 single “Summertime”) and scored commercially with a series of albums up through their disbandment in 1993 that did much to dramatically broaden the age range of rap listeners (unlike artists in the gangsta rap subgenre, Smith and Townes never ventured into R- or X-rated subject matter or language). However, by the time he was 21, Smith had frittered away much of his fortune and had fallen into debt with the IRS. Help arrived in the form of Warner Bros. executive Benny Medina, who wanted to create a family-friendly sitcom based on his own experiences as a poor kid living with a rich Beverly Hills family, starring the genial Smith. The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air debuted on NBC on September 10, 1990, and became a runaway hit, lasting six seasons. The program imparted to Smith — who had turned down an MIT scholarship to pursue his career — even wider audience exposure as the show’s protagonist, introducing him to legions of viewers who fell outside of the rap market.

During Prince’s lengthy run, Smith began to branch out into film work. Following roles in Where the Day Takes You (1992) and Made in America (1993), he drew substantial critical praise on the arthouse circuit, as a young gay con man feigning an identity as Sidney Poitier’s son, in Six Degrees of Separation (1993), directed by Fred Schepisi and adapted by John Guare from his own play. Smith also elicited minor controversy around this time for remarks he made in an interview that some perceived as homophobic. In 1994, Smith and Martin Lawrence signed on with powerhouse producers Don Simpson and Jerry Bruckheimer to co-star in the action-comedy Bad Boys, in which the two play a hotshot pair of Miami cops; it eventually raked in over 141 million dollars worldwide. The following year, Smith topped his Bad Boys success (and then some) with a turn in the sci-fi smash Independence Day, the effects-laden tale of an alien invasion. Co-written, executive-produced, and directed by Roland Emmerich for 20th Century Fox, this picture eventually pulled in over 816 million dollars globally, making it not only the top grosser of 1996, but one of the most lucrative motion pictures in history. Smith then tackled the same thematic ground (albeit in a completely different genre), as a government-appointed alien hunter partnered up with Tommy Lee Jones in Barry Sonnenfeld’s zany comedy Men in Black (1997), another smash success.

Not long after this, Smith achieved success on a personal front as well, as he married actress Jada Pinkett on New Year’s Eve 1998. The following autumn, Smith returned to cinemas with Enemy of the State, a conspiracy thriller with Gene Hackman that had him on the run from government agents. That film scored a commercial bull’s-eye, but its triumph preceded a minor disappointment. The following summer, Smith starred opposite Kevin Kline in Wild Wild West, Sonnenfeld’s lackluster follow-up to Men in Black, an overwrought and ham-handed cinematic rendering of the late-’60s TV hit.

The late fall of 2000 found Smith back in cinemas, playing a mysterious golf caddy who tutors down-on-his-luck putter Matt Damon in the syrupy The Legend of Bagger Vance (2000). Smith then trained rigorously for his most demanding role up to that point: that of legendary boxer Muhammad Ali in director Michael Mann’s biopic Ali (2001). The film struggled to find an audience, and critics were mixed, even if Smith’s well-studied performance earned praise as well as his first Oscar nomination. While Smith executive produced the Robert De Niro/Eddie Murphy comedy Showtime (2002), he doubled it up with work in front of the camera, on the sci-fi comedy sequel Men in Black II, also helmed by Barry Sonnenfeld. As expected, the film made an unholy amount of money; he followed it up with yet another sequel, the Bruckheimer-produced Bad Boys II. It topped the box office, as expected. The next year saw Smith pull the one-two punch of I, Robot — a futuristic, effects-laden fantasy — and the CG-animated Shark Tale, in which he voiced Oscar, a little fish with a big attitude who scrubs whales for a living. While Smith had proven himself as an action star time and again and had received high marks for his dramatic work, it remained to be seen if he could carry a romantic comedy. All speculation ceased in early 2005 with the release of Hitch: Starring Smith as a fabled “date doctor,” the film had the biggest opening weekend for a rom-com to date, leading many to wonder if there was anything Smith couldn’t do.

The following year, Smith starred in the period drama The Pursuit of Happyness. Set in early-’80s San Francisco, and directed by Gabriele Muccino (a director specifically summoned for the task by Smith), the film recounted the true story of Charles Gardner (Smith), a single dad struggling in an unpaid position as an intern at Dean Witter, all in an effort to be able provide for his son. The film tapped new reserves of compassion and desparation in Smith’s persona, as he managed to fully embody another real-life character while maintaining all of the qualities that endeared him to audiences in the first place: His humor, his hustle and his ingenuity. Upon its release, Happyness provided Smith with perhaps his first cinematic hat trick: critical praise, a second Academy Award nomination for Best Actor, and staggering box-office success (the film would become one of his largest hits). Meanwhile, he began work as the lead in I Am Legend (2007), the third screen incarnation of sci-fi giant Richard Matheson’s seminal novel of the same title (following a 1964’s The Last Man on Earth, and 1971’s The Omega Man).

Christian Bale Profile

Christian Bale is one of the few actors in Hollywood whose child stardom has successfully translated to steady and respectable adult employment. With a wistful handsomeness to complement his impressive, sometimes underrated talent, Bale has become something of a quiet sensation, netting choice roles in a number of unconventional, critically acclaimed films.
Born January 30, 1974, in Pembrokeshire, Wales, Bale was raised in England, Portugal, and the U.S. The product of a creative family (his mother was a dancer and both of his grandfathers were part-time actors), Bale made his stage debut at the age of ten, playing opposite British comedian Rowan Atkinson in +The Nerd. In 1986, he debuted on television as Alexis in the miniseries Anastasia: The Mystery of Anna. His film debut came the following year with the lead role in Steven Spielberg’s adaptation of J.G. Ballard’s Empire of the Sun. Although the film met with very mixed reviews, Bale received almost ubiquitous praise for his portrayal of a young boy interned in a Japanese prison camp during World War II. Following a starring role in a Swedish film, Mio min Mio, Bale next appeared in Kenneth Branagh’s celebrated 1988 adaptation of Henry V and in 1990, starred opposite Charlton Heston in a highly-regarded cable adaptation of Treasure Island.
In 1992, Bale appeared in his first adult role in the musical Newsies, in which he could be seen singing, dancing, and sporting a fairly convincing American accent. His next film, Swing Kids (1993), also featured him dancing, this time alongside Robert Sean Leonard in wartime Germany. Although the film failed to impress most critics, it succeeded in making a favorable impact on teenage girls and swing afficionados everywhere. The following year, Bale appeared as Laurie in Gillian Armstrong’s acclaimed adaptation of Little Women and then went on to lend his voice to Disney’s animated film Pocahontas, which proved to be one of 1995’s biggest box-office draws. The actor next appeared in The Secret Agent (1996), which, despite a strong cast including G閞ard Depardieu, Bob Hoskins, and Patricia Arquette, was widely unseen in the U.S. After a tragically small role in the same year’s The Portrait of a Lady, Bale was finally given the opportunity to step into the limelight with the 1997 film Metroland, an adaptation of Julian Barnes’ novel. Starring alongside Emily Watson, Bale played a young husband and father wallowing in discontented nostalgia and received overwhelmingly positive notices for his thoughtful, complex portrayal. The film was not released in the U.S. until the following year, when he also had lead roles in Todd Haynes’ eagerly anticipated Velvet Goldmine and All the Little Animals, which premiered at the Cannes Film Festival to strong reviews. The following year, Bale starred alongside Kevin Kline, Michelle Pfeiffer, and Rupert Everett in a lavish adaptation of A Midsummer Night’s Dream. In addition to the exposure he (literally) received in his role as Demetrius, Bale got a different kind of recognition for his part in the well-documented controversy surrounding the casting of Mary Harron’s adaptation of Bret Easton Ellis’ -American Psycho. After winning and then losing the film’s lead role to Leonardo DiCaprio, Bale then won it back, prompting a wave of media coverage and at least one publication’s decision to describe him as everyone’s favorite underdog. It was a title that, deserved or not, seemed to fit an actor who, beneath all of the hyperbole and hype, was one of Hollywood’s most engaging and underrated treasures. As if to stay in keeping with his below-radar persona, the prolific and kinetic advertising campaign for the humans versus dragons opus Reign of Fire (2002) found Bale curiously overshadowed by a chrome-domed Matthew McConaughey despite being first billed as the film’s star. And though his forst foray into sci-fi action proved only a moderate success at the box office after receiving mixed critical reception, Bale followed-up with the dystopian /thriller Equilibrium before returning to the present day with the low-key sexual /comedy drama Laurel Canyon (2002). Though that film too would quickly disappear from the theaters, audiences could rest assured that they would be seeing plenty more of the handsome star in Memento director Christopher Nolan’s latest entry in the Batman film series. That film was both a critical and a box office success. The collaboration was so satisfying that, before going to work together on the sequel, they joined forces for The Prestige alongside Hugh Jackman, Michael Caine, and Scarlett Johansson. He also appeared in Harsh Times, a coming of age drama co-starring Eva Longoria.

Gerard Butler Profile

Scottish actor Gerard Butler spent seven miserable years studying law before trying his hand at acting on the London stage. Half a decade later, a much happier Butler had over a dozen theater, movie, and television credits under his belt, including starring roles in the stage version of Trainspotting (1996) and the award-winning film Mrs. Brown (1997).

Born on November 13, 1969, in Glasgow, Butler is the youngest of Margaret and Edward Butler’s three children; he has a sister and a brother. When Butler was barely six months old, his family relocated to Montr?al, Canada, where his father undertook several failed business ventures. A year and a half later, Butler’s parents divorced, and his mother took the children back to Scotland. He saw his father once more when he was four years old, and then not again until he was 16. In the meantime, Butler grew up in his mother’s hometown of Paisley, where he frequented a nearby movie theater. Enamored with acting, he convinced his mother to take him to auditions, eventually joining the Scottish Youth Theatre and playing a street urchin in +Oliver! at the Kings Theatre in Glasgow. An exceptional student, Butler graduated at the top of his class. Hoping to please his family and his teachers, who felt acting was an unrealistic career choice, Butler enrolled in Glasgow University’s law program. He served as the president of the school’s law society and earned an honor’s degree.

After finishing college, Butler took a year and a half off to live in Los Angeles, where he appeared as an extra in the Kevin Costner/Whitney Houston vehicle The Bodyguard (1992). He then traveled to Canada to be at his father’s bedside as he succumbed to cancer. Shortly after his father’s death, Butler returned to Scotland to begin a two-year law traineeship in Edinburgh at one of the country’s top firms. But he was bored and discontented as a lawyer, and still dreamed about performing. He went to see +Trainspotting on-stage at the Fringe Festival in Edinburgh and knew he had made the wrong career choice. Soon enough, Butler’s unhappiness began to show in his work, and his firm fired him with only a week left in his training. Two days later, at age 25, he moved to London to begin his acting career. Butler took on a series of odd jobs — from waiting tables to demonstrating clockwork toys at a trade show — while looking for work as an actor. He was supposed to be serving as a casting assistant for the play +Coriolanus at the Mermaid Theatre when he ran into the show’s director, actor Steven Berkoff, at a coffee bar and asked to read for a part. Impressed with the ex-barrister’s moxie, Berkoff agreed and Butler secured his first professional acting role. While rehearsing for +Coriolanus, he accompanied one of the other actors to an audition for the same stage adaptation of Trainspotting he had seen in Edinburgh and landed the lead part of Mark Renton.

In 1997, with his theater career firmly established, Butler made his big-screen debut opposite Billy Connolly and Judi Dench in Mrs. Brown. Sometime later, he had returned to the film’s shooting location, Taymouth Castle, for a picnic when he saw a child drowning in the nearby River Tay. Butler dove into the water and saved the boy. The actor received a Certificate of Bravery from the Royal Humane Society for his selfless act. That same year, he earned a small speaking part as a bad guy in the Bond film Tomorrow Never Dies before spoofing ex-Wet Wet Wet singer Marti Pellow for the 1998 series The Young Person’s Guide to Becoming a Rock Star. Butler finished out the ’90s by appearing in the television comedy Lucy Sullivan Is Getting Married, as well as returning to the stage to appear opposite Sheila Gish and Rachel Weisz in +Suddenly, Last Summer in London’s West End.

Butler began the new millennium with supporting parts in the gangster film Shooters (2000) and the war drama Harrison’s Flowers (2000). He then simultaneously landed the high-profile title roles in Wes Craven’s Dracula 2000 (2000) and the USA television movie Attila (2001). Produced by the creators of The Mummy franchise, Attila chronicled the life of the eponymous fifth century barbarian and co-starred veteran actors Tim Curry and Powers Boothe. It also re-teamed Butler with his +Coriolanus director, Berkoff, who played his uncle in the film. The hype that surrounded both Dracula 2000 and Attila was fueled by CNN’s announcement that Butler was the frontrunner to replace Pierce Brosnan as the next James Bond. The following months, however, were anticlimactic for Butler. Dracula 2000 bombed at the box office and Attila, though one of the year’s highest-rated television miniseries, proved to be forgettable. The rumors surrounding his involvement with 007 were quickly quelled when Brosnan announced that he was staying on for at least two more Bond films, and the series’ producers never contacted Butler.

Determined to get back on his feet, Butler signed on with a new agency. He returned to British television for ITV’s miniseries The Jury (2002), which also featured Derek Jacobi and Antony Sher, while simultaneously filming a role as Christian Bale’s dragon-slaying best friend in the special-effects spectacle Reign of Fire (2002). He then quickly landed a supporting role in Renny Harlin’s Mindhunters with Val Kilmer and LL Cool J, but pulled out of the project to play the lead in Richard Donner’s long-awaited adaptation of Michael Crichton’s best-selling novel -Timeline (2003). Butler also turned heads as Angelina Jolie’s hunky love interest in the sequel Lara Croft Tomb Raider: The Cradle of Life that same year.

Though, to this point in his career, Butler had no doubt displayed immense talent as an actor, the films he had appeared in had almost consistently disappointed in terms of box-office returns. In 2004, that disheartening trend continued as Butler donned the famous mask of the disfigured musical genius made popular on the stage by actor Michael Crawford in the big-screen adaptation of Andrew Lloyd Webber’s +The Phantom of the Opera, with subsequent roles in The Game of Their Lives and Beowulf & Grendel doing little to increase his international recognizability. By 2006, it seemed that Butler was finally poised to break big, and as he prepared to lead the soldiers of Sparta in battle against the overwhelming forces of the Persian Empire in Dawn of the Dead director Zack Snyder’s adaptation of Frank Miller’s popular graphic novel -300, it appeared as if he was determined to do so in style.

Tom Cruise Profile

An actor whose name has become synonymous with all-American testosterone-driven entertainment, Tom Cruise spent the 1980s as one of Hollywood’s brightest-shining golden boys. With black hair, blue eyes, and unabashed cockiness, Cruise rode high on such hits as Top Gun and Rain Man. Although his popularity dimmed slightly in the early ’90s, he was able to bounce back with a string of hits that re-established him as both an action hero and, in the case of Jerry Maguire and Magnolia, a talented actor.

Born Thomas Cruise Mapother IV on July 3, 1962, in Syracuse, NY, Cruise led a peripatetic existence as a child, moving from town to town with his rootless family. A high-school wrestler, Cruise went into acting after being sidelined by a knee injury. This new activity served a dual purpose: performing satiated Cruise’s need for attention, while the memorization aspect of acting helped him come to grips with his dyslexia.

Moving to New York in 1980, Cruise held down odd jobs until getting his first movie break in Endless Love (1981). His first big hit was Risky Business (1982), in which he entered movie-trivia infamy with the scene wherein he celebrates his parents’ absence by dancing around the living room in his underwear. The Hollywood press corps began touting Cruise as one of the “Brat Pack,” a group of twentysomething actors who seemed on the verge of taking over the movie industry in the early ’80s. But Cruise chose not to play the sort of teen-angst roles that the other Brat Packers specialized in — a wise decision, in that he has sustained his stardom while many of his contemporaries have fallen by the wayside or retreated into direct-to-video cheapies.

Top Gun (1985) established Cruise as an action star, but again he refused to be pigeonholed, and followed up Top Gun with a solid characterization of a fledgling pool shark in The Color of Money (1986), the film that earned co-star Paul Newman an Academy Award. In 1988, Cruise took on one of his most challenging assignments, as the brother of an autistic savant played by Dustin Hoffman in Rain Man. “Old” Hollywood chose to give all the credit for that film’s success to Hoffman, but a closer look at Rain Man reveals that Cruise is the true central character in the film, the one who “grows” in humanity and maturity while Hoffman’s character, though brilliantly portrayed, remains the same.

In 1989, Cruise was finally given an opportunity to carry a major dramatic film without an older established star in tow. As paraplegic Vietnam vet Ron Kovic in Born on the Fourth of July (1989), Cruise delivered perhaps his most outstanding performance. Cruise’s bankability faltered a bit with the expensive disappointment Far and Away in 1990 (though it did give him a chance to co-star with his-then wife Nicole Kidman), but with A Few Good Men (1992), Cruise was back in form. In 1994, Cruise appeared as the vampire Lestat in the long-delayed film adaptation of the Anne Rice novel -Interview with the Vampire. Although she was vehemently opposed to Cruise’s casting, Rice reversed her decision upon seeing the actor’s performance.

In 1996, Cruise scored financial success with the big-budget actioner Mission: Impossible, but it was with his multilayered, Oscar-nominated performance in Jerry Maguire (also 1996) that Cruise proved once again why he is considered a major Hollywood player. 1999 saw Cruise reunited onscreen with Kidman in a project of a very different sort, Stanley Kubrick’s Eyes Wide Shut. The film, which was the director’s last, had been the subject of controversy, rumor, and speculation since it began filming. It opened to curious critics and audiences alike across the nation, and was met with a violently mixed response. However, it allowed Cruise to once again take part in film history, further solidifying his position as one of Hollywood’s most well-placed movers and shakers.

Cruise’s enviable position was again solidified later in 1999, when he earned a Best Supporting Actor nomination for his role as a loathsome “sexual prowess” guru in Paul Thomas Anderson’s Magnolia. In 2000, he scored again when he reprised his role as international agent Ethan Hunt in John Woo’s Mission: Impossible II, which proved to be one of the summer’s first big moneymakers. His status as a full-blown star of impressive dramatic range now cemented in the eyes of both longtime fans and detractors, the popular actor next set his sights on reteaming with Jerry Maguire director Cameron Crowe for a remake of Spanish director Alejandro Amen醔ar’s (The Others) Abre los Ojos titled Vanilla Sky. Though Vanilla Sky’s sometimes surreal trappings found the film recieving a mixed reception at the box office, the same could not be said for the following year’s massively successful sci-fi chase film Minority Report. Based on a short story by science fiction writer Philip K. Dick and directed by none other than Steven Spielberg, Minority Report scored a direct hit at the box office, and Cruise could next be seen gearing up for his role in Edward Zwick’s The Last Samurai alongside Ken Watanabe, who was nominated for an Oscar for his performance.

For his next film, Cruise picked a role unlike any he’d ever played; starring as a sociopathic hitman in the Michael Mann psychological thriller Collateral. He received major praise for his departure from the good-guy characters he’d built his career on, and for doing so convincingly. By 2005, he teamed up with Steven Spielberg again for the second time in three years with an epic adaptation of the H.G. Wells alien invasion story War of the Worlds.

The summer blockbuster was regarded as a good popcorn film, but was in some ways overshadowed by the negative publicity that Cruise had been gathering. It began in 2005, when Cruise became suddenly vocal about his beliefs in the principles of Scientology, the religion created by science fiction author L. Ron Hubbard. Cruise publicly denounced actress Brooke Shields for taking medication in order to combat her postpartum depression, citing antidepressants and the psychological sciences as immoral and unnecessary, going so far as to call it a “Nazi science” in an Entertainment Weekly interview. On June 24, 2005, he was interviewed by Matt Lauer for The Today Show during which time he appeared to be distractingly excitable and argumentative in his insistence that psychiatry is a “pseudoscience,” and in a Der Spiegel interview, he was quoted as saying that Scientology has the only successful drug rehabilitation program in the world.

This behavior caused a stirring of public opinion about Cruise, as did his relationship with 27-year-old actress Katie Holmes. The two announced their engagement in the spring of 2005, and Cruise’s enthusiasm for his new romantic interest created more curiosity about his mental stability. He appeared on The Oprah Winfrey Show on May 23, where he jumped up and down on the couch during his interview, professing his love for Holmes. He also ecstatically shook Winfrey’s hands and at one point fell dramatically to one knee. The actor’s newly outspoken attitude about Scientology linked intimately to the buzz surrounding his new relationship, as Holmes converted to the faith despite a lifelong adherence to Catholicism. The media was flooded with a rumor that the young actress had a “lost” period around this time, when for two weeks she was unreachable to her parents, friends, and extended family. Many suspected that Cruise’s strange public behavior was nothing more than a failed publicity stunt to raise interest in War of the Worlds, a general attitude that continued through October 2005, when he and Holmes announced that she was pregnant.

Some audiences found Cruise’s ultra-enthusiastic behavior refreshing, but for the most part, the actor’s new public image hurt his fan base, as he alienated many of his viewers. As he geared up for the spring 2006 release of Mission: Impossible III, his ability to sell a film based almost purely on his own likability was in question for the first time in 20 years. Despite a cast that boasted such names as Philip Seymour Hoffman and Jonathan Rhys-Meyers, curiosity about the film’s success seemed to hinge solely on Cruise’s controversial personal life. The movie ended up performing essentially as expected, despite lining up almost conspicuously with the birth of he and Holmes’ daughter Suri in spring of 2006.

The media frenzy that followed the pregnancy and birth were no less involved. There were whispers of dangerous or inadvisable methods of childcare and feeding, rumors that the Scientology endorsed method for birthing demands complete silence from everyone — including the mother — and questions about what kind of access to medical care and pain medicine Holmes would have in accordance with the practices of Scientology. Holmes said little publicly of her new relationship, religion, or role as a mother, but Cruise insisted in interviews that the process of the “silent birth” demands others in the room be quiet, but not the mother.

Even after the child was born, controversy surrounded the name that the couple chose for her, as Cruise’s public statement claimed the name Suri was chosen because it means “princess” in Hebrew and “red rose” in Persian, while experts on both languages insisted that this was not accurate. Scholars and speakers of the languages in question said that in Persian (conventionally known as Farsi) the word denotes the color red but has no connection whatsoever to roses, while in Hebrew, the closest connection it bears to its claimed origin is that the Jews of Eastern Europe use it as a nickname for the name Sarah, and that in ancient Hebrew Sarah is the feminine form of the word Lord. After the birth, the couple finally set their wedding date, planning to hold the event in early July.

Cruise next made headlines on a business front, when — in November 2006 — he and corporate partner Paula Wagner (the twin forces behind the lucrative Cruise-Wagner Productions, est. 1993) officially “took over” the defunct United Artists studio. Originally founded by such giants as Douglas Fairbanks and Charles Chaplin in 1921, UA was run into extinction after the Heaven’s Gate fiasco in the early ’80s and its purchase by Transamerica’s Kirk Kerkorian. The press announced that Cruise and Wagner would “revive” the studio, with Wagner serving as Chief Executive Officer and Cruise starring in and producing projects. MGM (UA’s parent company) handed the team the rights to almost single-handedly develop United’s production slate, and gave them an allotment of four films per year, a number expected to dramatically increase. Harry Sloan, the chairman of MGM, remarked in a press release, “Partnering with Tom Cruise and Paula Wagner, we have the ideal creative foundation from which to reintroduce the United Artists brand. United Artists is once again the haven for independent filmmakers and a vital resource in developing quality filmed entertainment consistent with MGM’s modern studio model.”

James McAvoy Profile

Actor James McAvoy was born on January 1, 1979, in Glasgow, Scotland. James trained at the Royal Scottish Academy of Music and Drama and first appeared in 1995 in the film “The Near Room.” He also has starred in the television mini-series “The Band of Brothers” and the Sci-Fi Channel’s “Children of Dune.” He is most known for his role of faun Mr. Tumnus in the movie “The Chronicles of Narnia, The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe.” James is a highly skilled boxer, fencer and rugby player and is also a fire-eater.
Onscreen for nearly a decade at the time he was cast in director Kevin McDonald’s The Last King of Scotland, Glasgow-born actor James McAvoy seemed to many an overnight sensation. The fact is, however, that the Royal Scottish Academy of Music and Drama alumnus already formed the foundation of an enduring career at the time he was charged with holding his own opposite the formidable — and eventually, Oscar-winning — Forest Whitaker.

McAvoy’s parents divorced when here was just seven years old. In the aftermath, he and his mother would go to live with his grandparents in Glasgow’s housing projects, with the youngster’s notable interest in stage and film work eventually leading him to study at the Royal Scottish Academy of Music and Drama. At 16, McAvoy made his professional acting debut in the child abuse drama The Near Room, with a role in the long-running British crime drama The Bill following in short order. On the heels of a part in 2001’s Emmy Award-winning WWII mini-series Band of Brothers, McAvoy caught the eye of critics in the small screen adaptation White Teeth before being cast in a pivotal role in the sci-fi effort Children of Dune.

While roles in such UK television dramas as Early Doors and State of Play found McAvoy growing increasingly comfortable on the small screen, feature performances in Bright Young Things, Wimbledon and Inside I’m Dancing brought him to the attention of Hollywood. In 2005, the actor went global in a very big way with a pivotal appearance as Mr. Tumnus in The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe. But it was his Last King role the following year, as a hard-partying doctor who gradually becomes a captive to one of the Twentieth Century’s most notorious dictators, that truly propelled him to international acclaim. With his star-making role in The Last King of Scotland, McAvoy became not only a critical darling, but a serious dramatic talent whose future appeared to hold great things as well, a notion reinforced by his starring performances in no less than four features released stateside in 2007.