In the 1980s, Corey Feldman was one of the biggest names in Hollywood. He and his best friend Corey Feldman (they were known as “the Two Coreys” or “The Coreys”) starred in several popular movies together, including The Lost Boys and License to Drive.
But as quickly as these two rose to fame, they fell from grace. Both Coreys entered a dark phase of post stardom that only child stars can truly understand, but only one has lived to tell his tale. Corey Haim ended up dying in 2010, and only after his death did the truth come out about just how troubled the kid was.
Trouble From the First Day
Haim was born in Toronto, and through attending auditions with his older sister he got the acting bug. He got some commercial gigs, and then in 1984, 13-year-old Haim started his TV career, appearing in the educational comedy show The Edison Twins from 1984 to 1985.
In 1984, he was cast in the thriller Firstborn. Even from the beginning, Haim was met with trouble. On the very first day of shooting Firstborn, he got into an altercation with another actor. Peter Weller, who played Haim’s mother’s violent boyfriend in the film, was enraged with Haim after the child actor paid him a compliment.
Thrown Against a Wall
Weller threw the kid against a wall and told him never to speak to him again after a take. It took three production assistants to separate the pair. Undeterred by angry actors, Haim went on to appear in a number of films, including Secret Admirer, Murphy’s Romance, and Lucas.
Lucas, in 1986, earned him rave reviews. Roger Ebert said, “If he continues to act this well, he will never become a half-forgotten child star, but will continue to grow into an important actor.” 1987 was his big break, though, with The Lost Boys.
Getting Lost With the Boys on Set
It was on The Lost Boys set that he met Corey Feldman, and the two became lifelong best friends. Haim, who by then was already used to drinking beers on set, tried marijuana for the first time on the set of Lost Boys.
From there, Haim started using cocaine, which ” soon led to crack.” (Let this not be fodder for the whole “marijuana is a gateway drug” debate.) Haim and Feldman become friends, colleagues, and hooligans, working together in seven movies and, along the way, going through significant addiction issues.
From the Soda Pop Club to Rehab
Around this time, Haim was a regular at Alphy’s Soda Pop Club, a private nightclub for Hollywood’s underage actors. Other clubgoers included Christina Applegate, Alyssa Milano, and Tori Spelling. “I lived in LA in the 1980s, which was not the best place to be,” Haim once admitted.
1988, a year after Lost Boys, marked his “breaking point” of drug addiction when he was filming License to Drive alongside Feldman. He decided to get clean in 1989, when he was 18 and entered rehab for the first time.
Fan Letters and Teenage Girls
“I wanted to be clean for me, not for anyone else,” he explained. But it was also the 2,000 fan letters he would receive weekly and the fact that teenage girls would wait at his apartment building. He managed to get clean, but Haim continued to struggle with addiction.
He would go through waves of relapses and rehab visits that lasted for the rest of his life. “Corey had a tremendous saboteur inside of him,” Dr. Nicki Monti, a psychotherapist who worked with him, said. “And that saboteur he surrendered to.”
He Wanted to Be the Next James Dean
“He was living under the spell of his addiction, and he was never able to break that spell,” Monti noted. It’s a shame considering Haim had real ambitions. He told the LA Times that he wanted to be the next James Dean.
“I know I can do it. Dean made only three movies, and he’s such a legend. People think he’s so brilliant. He was so raw. I just want to be known like Dean was known. I just want people to think that I’m really, really good.”
Addicted to “Pretty Much Anything”
And people did think he was good, he just let drugs and alcohol get in the way. He worked into the early 1990s, but he also made up to 15 trips to rehab. By the mid-90s, Haim was being cast in only straight-to-video productions.
He told Larry King in 2007 that he made efforts to get straight, but he said, “I think I have an addiction to pretty much everything. I mean, I have to be very careful with myself as far as that goes.”
He Tried to Sell His Hair and Teeth for Money
By the time the 2000s came around, Haim’s acting gigs were further and further between. He entered into a long hiatus – one that lasted eight years. During those years, Haim went deep into debt due to medical bills and hospital stays.
He got so desperate at one point that, in an attempt to pay off the bills, he tried to sell clumps of his hair and even an extracted tooth on eBay. “He made so many attempts at suicide,” Feldman reflected on this particularly rough time in Haim’s life.
Time to Make a Comeback
“He’s overdosed so many times… having him foaming at the mouth, coming downstairs and finding him that way and drooling and not able to speak.” Feldman remembers having to put charcoal down his friend’s throat “so that he could breathe.”
After Haim’s self-confessed “addiction to pretty much everything” that led to his long break from the spotlight, the actor tried to make a comeback in 2008. He ran a full-page ad in Variety: “This is not a stunt. I’m back. I’m ready to work. I’m ready to make amends.”
Drama on The Two Coreys Reality Show
During his comeback, Haim and Feldman starred in two seasons of The Two Coreys, a reality show about Haim living with Feldman and his wife and trying to get himself back on his feet. Despite being close friends and feeling the need to support Haim, Feldman made a vow.
After Haim showed up high to the set of a sequel of The Lost Boys, Feldman publicly vowed to cut off Haim until he got clean. “I don’t feel that he’s a safe person to have around my wife and child at the moment, for a multitude of reasons.” The two friends later reconciled off-camera.
The Abuse Claims Start to Surface
As both Feldman and Haim transformed from child stars to adults, reports started surfacing that they both had been sexually abused by powerful men in the industry. Alison Arngrim, who starred in Little House on the Prairie, told Fox News in 2011, how “People said, ‘Oh yeah, the Coreys, everyone’s had them.’”
“I literally heard that they were ‘passed around.’ The word was that they were given drugs and being used for sex.” It got dark – very dark for the Coreys. And the struggle led them both down paths of addiction. Haim, it seems, took it a lot harder.
He Started Living With His Mother
In 2007, on their reality show, the pair confessed to having been molested when they were just starting out in Hollywood. “That was one of those things that we’d discussed not bringing up,” Feldman later told GQ. “And then Haim brought it up anyway.”
Their show lasted a year, and then two years later, on March 10, 2010, Haim died. He was 38. At the time, he was living in an apartment with his mother, who was sick with breast cancer. Haim went unconscious in his mother’s house.
He Gained a Lot of Weight
On top of his continuing addictions, Haim gained an alarming amount of weight — over 300 pounds at one point (he estimated). Despite all the attempts at staying clean, he kept relapsing, and at one point he suffered a stroke.
On the day of his death, his mother, Judy Haim, reported that her son had been suffering from “flu-like symptoms” for a few days. After helping him into bed, she called an ambulance, which took him to a hospital, where he died. For a while, there was some confusion around the actor’s cause of death.
How Did Corey Haim Die?
The police found several prescription medications around Haim, which is why it was initially reported that his death might have been drug related. It was later ruled that the official cause of death was pneumonia.
Long after his death, details about the (alleged) abuse came to light. Haim was 13 when he was abused on the set of 1986’s Lucas. In 2019, Feldman decided to make a documentary, Truth: The Rape of Two Coreys, about his late friend’s story.
It Was Haim’s Dying Wish
“I am able to say the names of who did what and the details of who did what. There are going to be people who are going to be very unhappy that this is coming out. People who want it silenced. Nothing can stop it at this point,” he said, adding, “That’s why we’re only showing it one time.”
Feldman spoke to Rolling Stone in 2019, telling them that Haim had begged him to tell his story if he were to die first. “Nobody knows what it feels like to constantly console somebody whose life has been ruined by rape…”
Who Are These Industry Men?
“Unless you’ve been there, holding them when they cry, bringing them back to life over and over, stopping them from walking around with a knife.” Feldman made a point to say, “I didn’t ask for this. I didn’t ask to tell his story. I didn’t ask for any of it.”
Feldman was teasing the film for nearly three years, leaving everyone anxiously waiting to hear who the filthy men in Hollywood were. A year before the documentary, Feldman told Rolling Stone about two “industry men” who molested him at the age of 14, and that a famous actor raped Haim.
Calling Out Charlie Sheen
At the time, though, Feldman stopped short of naming names. But with this doc, he broke the silence. His movie starts with the end of Haim’s life – an audio recording of the 911 call Judy made after finding her unresponsive son.
In the theatre at the premiere, one scene stood out, and it was when Feldman named Charlie Sheen as Haim’s rapist. He also included a detailed account with references to Crisco being used as a lubricant, and two trailers in which the sex act took place.
Charlie Sheen Denies the Allegations
Feldman claimed the abuse happened on the set of Lucas, a coming-of-age movie with Sheen playing “Cappie,” a protector of Haim’s titular character. The film also starred Winona Ryder and Courtney Thorne-Smith, among others.
It’s unclear if legal ramifications dissuaded Feldman from speaking out before, or if he was just fed up and ready to speak. Sheen was not interviewed in the film, but when The National Enquirer published the allegations in 2017, he adamantly denied the claims. Sheen actually spoke out publicly hours after the premiere.
Haim’s Mother Speaks Up
Sheen’s spokesperson told The Wrap: “These sick, twisted and outlandish allegations never occurred. Period.” The representative then pointed to a source by Haim’s own mother for people “to consider.” What did Judy have to say?
Well, she told Entertainment Tonight: “If my son was here to hear all of this he would throw up.” The mother said the accusations were “all made up.” She said, “My son never mentioned Charlie. We never talked about Charlie.” She added that she’s “fed up” with the accusation, and that her family and friends were freaked out.
The Haim Clan Is Freaking Out
“Corey’s best friends are freaking out. They’re going, ‘What the hell is he talking about?’” Judy also said she lived with her son in Canada “half the time.” She knew “exactly where this kid was at all times.”
Part of the reason she doesn’t believe the claims is because her son had a “very big mouth. Every time he had an interview he told everybody what drugs he was on, what he was doing.” As adamant as Judy was to say her son was never raped by Charlie Sheen, she did announce someone else as the perpetrator.
It Was “This Guy Dominick”
Judy claimed that the man who actually abused her son when was “this guy Dominick.” She said Dominick “is the guy that abused my son. You know how I know that? Because my son said so. He said so on ‘The Two Coreys.’”
She is most likely referring to actor Dominick Brascia, who has denied ever abusing Haim. When Haim was younger, he and his mom lived in an apartment in Studio City, California, “And all of a sudden Dominick is moving next to us,” Judy told Dr. Oz on his show.
Whispering Into Dr. Oz’s Ear
According to Judy, there was one day when her son was at Dominick’s apartment, and he “called me up and he was yelling and screaming on the phone. And he says, ‘Mom, come and get me! He’s not getting off me!’”
She came to the apartment to find Dominick, fully dressed, pinning her son to the floor. Judy threatened him with a pool cue, and he relented. On the Dr. Oz show, Judy refused to give details about the situation, resorting to whispering in the host’s ear. “So, they had a form of sex,” the host said aloud.
He Said, She Said
“A form of sex. Not rape,” Judy reiterated. “But it’s illegal to do that to a minor,” the host stated. “Absolutely, it is,” she said. Oz then added, “And it could scar a young man.” “Absolutely,” she affirmed. Judy has gone from saying her son was raped, to not raped, to saying there was “some form of sex.”
It’s unclear who to believe in this saga. While she denies that Sheen raped her son, Feldman’s ex-wife, Susie Sprague (who was also in The Two Coreys), supported the claim. Jamison Newlander, a fellow actor who acted in The Lost Boys, and friend of Haim’s and Feldman’s, also attested to the claims.
It Was Common Knowledge, Apparently
Both Sprague and Newlander say Haim revealed the rape to them, and even suggest that such abuse was common knowledge in Hollywood circles. Feldman further called out other abusers’ names from his youth, including his former manager, Marty Weiss, along with Alphy Hoffman, the owner of Alphy’s Soda Pop Club.
On the Dr. Oz Show in 2017, Feldman accused his former assistant, John Grissom, of molesting him. Neither Grissom nor Hoffman were interviewed for Feldman’s documentary, nor have they commented on the allegations. Weiss, on the other hand, has been defending himself on Twitter.
Judy vs. Feldman
In one dramatic scene in the documentary, Feldman accuses Judy of not defending nor protecting her son. “It’s your responsibility, Judy Haim, and not anyone else’s,” he shouts into the camera, “so stop putting the blame on me!”
Judy does not appear in the film. She and Feldman have publicly battled for years. She repeatedly called for him to stop telling these “lies,” accusing him of fabricating the story to further his career. As for Feldman, he believes Judy Haim is out to ruin his reputation… and his life.
He Dated Alyssa Milano
Haim never married or had any children. He did have some high-profile romances, though. He dated Alyssa Milano from 1987 to 1990, as teenagers. After his passing, Milano posted on Twitter: “Just woke up to the sad, sad news that Corey Haim passed away… RIP sweet boy.”
He then met Nicole Eggert, who co-starred with him in Blown Away and The Double 0 Kid. Eggert played Haim’s leading lady – a role that transcended into real life. The couple met when they were teenagers in Hollywood and soon found a romantic connection.
Nicole Eggert and Corey Haim Were Engaged
“We were so young,” Eggert told Access Hollywood after Haim’s death. “Maybe 14 years old. He had just moved to Los Angeles [and had] just finished filming Lucas.” They even got engaged, which Eggert referred to as “funny,” since they were only 17 at the time.
“It’s funny to me now in hindsight because we wouldn’t have been allowed to be married… we loved each other dearly.” She wore an engagement ring, and they were engaged for five months, but eventually the two grew apart and she gave the ring to Corey’s mom.
She Was His Shoulder to Cry On
They never stopped being friends. Eggert asserted that she didn’t see him do drugs but was there for him during rough times. “I never watched what he did but there definitely were issues,” she said. “I held his hand when he wasn’t feeling well… I spent a lot of nights in emergency rooms with him.”
“I don’t think that I saved his life, I just think that I was there for him.” Eggert revealed that there were “medics on set” who would assist Haim in getting “what [he needed]” during withdrawals.
Medics on Set “Enabled” Him
“So, they were in essence enabling him,” the Access Hollywood said. “Absolutely,” Eggert affirmed. Nicole also addressed the molestation accusations. “I know who he is because I was there with them. I was friends with them at this time,” she said the alleged abuser.
“I hope he’s having a horrible life.” She explained that the last she spoke with Haim was when he wanted her to get involved with The Two Coreys. She never did.
He Proposed to Cindy Guyer
In 2000, Haim proposed to Cindy Guyer despite having only known her for two days. In reference to Haim’s death, Guyer said, “We almost knew it was going to happen; he was such a mess… He had a devil inside him, and the devil was the drug.”
“He got violent and temperamental… He was doing a lot of drugs.” Guyer had booked him into rehab at one point in their relationship. “I thought, I’m not going to be responsible for getting anyone on drugs, so I booked him into Betty Ford. He ended up walking out of rehab eight days later.”
The Man Loved to Propose
Haim, who seemed to either love proposing or just really hated being alone, popped the question to Tiffany Shepis before he died. She told CNN, “Back in 2008, I was a really good friend of Corey’s, trying to help him like everybody does, you know? He’s a charming kid with a lot of issues.”
None of his engagements ever made it to a wedding, and it’s safe to say that Haim was too troubled to hold a healthy relationship. He was also rumored to have dated actress Lala Sloatman, the reality star Daisy De La Hoya, and even Victoria Beckham in the mid-90s.
The Lost Boys Was Supposed to Be a “Cutesy” Film
Fans of the film might enjoy some behind-the-scenes facts. The iconic horror film from 1987 was one of Joel Schumacher’s most famous. Kiefer Sutherland, Jason Patric, and the two Coreys set the scene, but there are other things to reveal about the making of the movie.
Word on the street is that a remake is being made. Apparently, director Richard Donner is at the helm and wants to make a much more kid-friendly movie. His wish to make a “cutesy, ‘G’-rated movie” didn’t come to fruition and he stayed on as an executive producer instead.
It Took Six Weeks to Convince Jason Patric to Join
The Lost Boys wouldn’t be the same without Jason Patric and his performance as Michael Emerson who becomes a vampire. Director Joel Schumacher knew he saw something in the relatively unknown actor when he was casting for the part.
But Patric continually turned down the role. Schumacher later revealed that he met with Patric every day for six weeks, trying to convince him that his movie wasn’t going to be like other exploitation horror movies. Luckily, Patric signed on, which was good news since Schumacher didn’t have a backup actor lined up.
They Added Unused Footage From Top Gun
80s horror films seemed to always experience budget cuts right before the start of production, and The Lost Boys was no exception. Before Schumacher died in 2020, the director told Empire that Warner Bros. suddenly got “cold feet” before shooting.
So, they cut the budget by $2 million. The art department was hit the most. Production designer Bo Welch had to get creative and find some ingenious ways to make it work. One way was taking unused B-roll footage from Top Gun, which was used for the POV shot of a vampire flying through the clouds.
Kiefer Sutherland’s Character Was Inspired by Billy Idol
Kiefer Sutherland’s character, David Powers, was only one of the main bad guys in the movie, but he became a fan favorite and a heartthrob due to his iconic look (gotta love that platinum blonde mullet). David was actually supposed to have a different look.
Schumacher wanted him to have long blonde hair, but Sutherland felt like he would look like a wrestler instead. On his first day on set, Sutherland had his hair made to look like Billy Idol’s, who Sutherland thought was really cool at the time. Schumacher wasn’t pleased at first, but eventually laughed about it for years.
Corey Feldman Based His Character on Action Movie Heroes
Feldman’s Edgar Frog was also iconic, because of the way he portrayed a teenage vampire hunter. The Stand By Me star revealed that when he was reading the script, Schumacher approached the young actor and said he needed to “butch it up a little bit.”
What he really wanted was for Feldman to go home and watch Sylvester Stallone, Chuck Norris, and other action stars of the time. The director wanted Feldman to get inspired by those characters. What he came up with was his version of Edgar Frog, the fearless teenage vampire hunter.
Alex Winter’s First Day on Set
Remember the beach party scene? It’s a ridiculous scene for us viewers, but it was even weirder for the cast, as Alex Winter revealed in 2021. “I wish I had a camera while we were shooting The Lost Boys, because that entire shoot was absolutely insane, and wild, and fun, and very specific to its era.”
They shot the scene on his first day. “I got to Santa Cruz the day they were shooting the beach party scene. There’s Tim Cappello, the sax guy, all oiled up, right? Bonfires, and all of this insanity, and I was like ‘What the hell is this movie I just signed onto? What is this thing?’”
Sutherland Broke His Wrist Trying to Impress a Girl
Sutherland and the other motorcycle-riding vampires did their own stunt work. On the one hand it was badass, but there were also some drawbacks, like how Sutherland broke his wrist when trying to impress a girl who was walking along the Santa Cruz boardwalk.
In 2019, Sutherland explained how he performed a wheelie to show off but failed to notice a train track. He was thrown off the bike and ended up breaking his right wrist in three places. A special cast had to be created, and he had to start riding the bike with the brake and clutch on the left side.
Schumacher Wanted to Make a Spinoff Called Lost Girls
There were two direct-to-DVD sequels: 2008’s Lost Boys: The Tribe and 2010’s Lost Boys: The Thirst. Schumacher reportedly didn’t want anything to do with the continuing stories of the characters from the original. He told Rotten Tomatoes in 2007 that all the “lost boys” were dead – there’s no longer a story.
He suggested making a female-centered spinoff. Lost Girls “could be a vampire movie. It’s a great name. I told them to do ‘Lost Girls.’ It’d be great…. gorgeous teenage biker chicks who are vampires. It’ll be great.’ But they don’t listen to me.”