TMZ.com reported Wednesday that actor Corey Haim (Lucas, The Lost Boys) died at 2:15 am; yesterday afternoon, Haim’s mother Judy told “Access Hollywood” that the coroner’s department determined that a cause of death was pulmonary congestion.
The autopsy also found that the Canadian-born actor had an enlarged heart and his lungs were filled with water; the official toxicology report will be complete in six to eight weeks.
Haim was a child star in the 1980s, stemming from his role in 1986’s Lucas, which earned him a nomination for Exceptional Performance by a Young Actor (Comedy or Drama) at the Young Artist Awards and prompted critic Roger Ebert to write in his review back then, “Haim creates one of the most three-dimensional, complicated, interesting characters of any age in any recent movie.”
Haim followed that with the TV series “Roomies,” but it will probably be his role as a teen who has to protect his mom and new hometown from a gang of punk vampires in The Lost Boys (1987) that more people remember. It was on the set of this film where Haim met another child star named Corey Feldman and the two went on to star in several movies together (License to Drive, Watchers, Dream a Little Dream).
After making some direct-to-video movies in the 1990s, gaining a drug dependency, and declaring bankruptcy, Haim’s career seemed to take off again, starting with a reality show on A&E with Feldman called “The Two Coreys” which aired in 2006 and other projects in the works. However, the show was canceled in its third season in 2008 due to some friction between the actors.
Haim is survived by his mother.