Corey Haim, the actor who rocketed to fame during his teen years in the 80s but was never able to sustain those heights into adulthood, has died early this morning at Providence St. Joseph Medical Center in Burbank, Los Angeles. He was 38.
Born in Toronto, Haim became interested in acting when his mother enrolled him in acting classes to help him overcome his shyness. By age ten, Haim was beginning to appear in commercials. He made his film debut in 1984’s Firstborn. Strong supporting roles in Silver Bullet and Murphy’s Romance (both 1985) lead to his first starring role in 1986’s romantic dramedy Lucas.
The following year, Haim starred in the hit teen vampire flick The Lost Boys. It was on this film that he met and became friends with fellow actor Corey Feldman. The two would linked in the public’s eyes, going on to work on another seven projects together – the theatrical films License to Drive (1988), Dream a Little Dream (1989) and Blown Away (1992) and the direct to video projects Last Resort (1994), Dream a Little Dream 2 (1995), Busted (1997) and Lost Boys: The Tribe (2008).
Although he finished out the 80s with two more hits, the comedy License To Drive and the horror film Watchers (both 1988), Haim soon found his career in steep decline in the 90s. Mainly due to his problems with drug addiction, a majority of the work he could secure was in low-budget, direct to video fare.
It is looking that Haim was in the midst of planning a career comeback. He had recently completed work on two films – the drama Decisions and the thriller American Sunset – both set for release later this year and had been in production on the zombie thriller The Dead Sea. There were also approximately half a dozen films that he was attached to that hadn’t begun production yet.
