Corey Haim Dead at 38
Posted 03.10.10 by reelz
According to The Los Angeles Times, '80s teen idol Corey Haim was found unresponsive at 3:30 AM this morning in an Oakwood, CA, apartment. He was taken to a hospital in Burbank, where he was officially pronounced dead. The Los Angeles Police Department said that the cause was an apparent accidental drug overdose, although an autopsy has yet to be performed.
Haim is perhaps best remembered for two star-making roles in the mid '80s. In Lucas, he played a 14-year-old accelerated high school student who falls for a girl two years older (played by fellow '80s icon Kerri Green). The movie, interestingly, was the debut for Winona Ryder and also featured a breakout role for Charlie Sheen.
Haim also starred in the horror movie The Lost Boys as the younger of two brothers who move to a California town plagued by vampires. He starred opposite Corey Feldman, another teen heartthrob whose career flagged after the '80s. Haim and Feldman starred together in a number of other movies, including License to Drive. They teamed up recently for the A&E show The Two Coreys, which ran for two seasons before being cancelled in 2008.
Haim long struggled with drug dependency before his death. In a 2007 interview with The Sun, he said:
I started on the downers which were a hell of a lot better than the uppers because I was a nervous wreck. But one led to two, two led to four, four led to eight, until at the end it was about 85 a day. The doctors could not believe I was taking that much. And that was just the Valium. I'm not talking about the other pills I went through.
He also added that his weight went up to 200 pounds, and that he suffered a stroke after multiple attempts at rehab.
At the time of his death, Haim was working on several movies, two of them directorial debut projects: The Throwaways involves a cop and a journalist who investigate the disappearance of the homeless in New York City, and A Detour in Life tells the story of a man who turns to alcohol after his wife is killed by a horse. Haim was to star as the lead in the latter movie.
He also completed filming for the thriller American Sunset, which does not yet have a release date. Here is the trailer: