Corey Haim and the Dangerous Culture of Fame

By BARCODE 2x

38-year-old actor Corey Haim was found dead this morning of accidental overdose in his home in Los Angeles. The child star of Lucas and The Lost Boys, Haim was a comical, quircky, endearing performer. After years of struggle with drug addiction, the circumstances of his death are all too-familiar.

Generations of child actors have fallen prey to a culture that leads them easily into dangerous behaviors. Survivors like Drew Barrymore and Robert Downey Jr. speak of their exposure to drugs and eventual addictions beginning in their early adolescence.

With the loss of River Phoenix while he was still in his prime, and the ticking-time-bomb that his Joaquin Phoenix, plus the demise of Michael Jackson and Heath Ledger more recently, it seems that this culture is becoming increasingly dangerous. Young actors have not learned from previous examples. These are children plunged into a fast and furious life. Fame, money, idleness, burnout, depression, all of these will lead a young person to drugs. When fame is reached at a young age, when retirement comes in one's early 20s, the clock runs out. The fame and good looks diminish, but the addictions remain. The trappings of fame and the desires for the extreme lifetsyle does not go away when the performer has sunk into Hollywood's shadows.

Without proper protections, the cycle goes on, and we continually see adorable child stars become dark, brooding victims of a collapsed bubble. The bubble expands as they enter the limelight, often as very young pre-teens, and the bubble bursts as they near adulthood, already with ruined marriages, debts, habits, and it all happens so publicly. Addiction, suicide, disease, all run rampant through the lives of these once-cherubic young stars.

Can show business institute change to prevent more of these tragic losses? How can interventions or therapy help guide these young people and their families past the major pitfalls of the business? Few or none of these young people ever made it without the pressure and determination of a parent or guardian, pushing them along, hustling them into casting calls, driven to make their careers at a very young age. With teams of agents, publicists, handlers and assistants, you would figure that someone would help keep them out of this kind of self-destruction.

Should agents and studios employ counselors, therapists, to help young people handle the pressure? When Heath Ledger died at 28, he was found with a chemical soup in his body that had been keeping him awake and alert during night shoots of The Dark Knight. The conditions of creating the film itself led him, in my opinion, to his untimely death. The making of a film is an extreme art, in particular when a performer is going to the lengths that Ledger did for this film. No doubt it is a strong and unforgettable performance, in a short but illustrious career. Ledger was looked upon as one of the great actors of his generation. In a short time, he built a body of work that was stunning, putting in a series of performances that went beyond what we have come to expect from young actors. But the working conditions of film drive people to unhealthy extremes.

The loss of Corey Haim is a singular event too, and we do these people a disservice to try and lump them into the same cultural phenomenon. This young man had his demons and troubles all his own. None of these people are mere products of their environment. These are sad human beings in trouble. Hollywood has been creating stars and watching them self-destruct since the dawn of film as an art form. The culture of fame, and the expectations put upon young actors by their public, by their studios, and by their parents, are all in need of re-evaluation. A culture that continues to allow it, and refuses to learn from it, is a destructive and oppressive force. No culture can sustain these kind of losses.

Our culture has never known how to handle addiction. All victims of drug addiction need support. The reason we focus on these addicts in particular is that their circumstances are so unique, extreme, and relatively treatable. No one has been able to control drug abuse within a school system, but one would figure that within an industry, it is entirely possible to install preventative services for addiction.