Actor Brad Renfro ordered into drug treatment

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) – Actor Brad Renfro, former child
star in such films as “The Client” and “Tom and Huck,” was
ordered into drug treatment program on Thursday after he
pleaded guilty to charges of trying to buy heroin.

Renfro, 23, whose arrest in a skid-row drug sweep by
undercover police was captured in a front-page picture of the
Los Angeles Times, also was placed on three years probation,
according to a spokeswoman for the Los Angeles County District
Attorney’s Office.

As a condition of his probation, Renfro must submit to
random drug tests, spokeswoman Jane Robison said, adding that
the actor is slated for another court appearance on March 6.

Renfro was one of 14 people arrested in a December 22
police sting operation aimed at cracking down on narcotics
trafficking in the skid row section of Los Angeles.

A photograph of Renfro’s arrest, showing the performer
dressed in a military shirt, his pants pockets inside out and
his hands being bound behind him, ran on the front page of the
next day’s Los Angeles Times.

It was the latest in a string of run-ins Renfro has had
with law enforcement during the past several years, including
an arrest for trying to steal a yacht in Florida in August
2000.

Renfro made his film debut at age 12 as a young boy who
knew too much in the 1994 thriller “The Client,” starring Tommy
Lee Jones and Susan Sarandon, and gained notice the following
year as the best friend of a young AIDS patient in “The Cure.”

Also Thursday, the City Attorney’s Office reported that
comedian Tracy Morgan, a former cast member of “Saturday Night
Live,” pleaded no contest last Friday to a misdemeanor drunken
driving charge stemming from a traffic stop in December.

Morgan, 37, who also starred in his own short-lived NBC
sitcom, was placed on three years probation and was ordered to
attend alcohol awareness classes, City Attorney spokesman Frank
Mateljan said.

The comedian, best known on “SNL” for his impressions of
such celebrities as Cuba Gooding Jr., Della Reese and Louie
Armstrong, was initially stopped for speeding on December 2 in
Hollywood, Mateljan said.

Reuters/VNU