8 Beloved Child Actors Who Completely Disappeared From Our Screens

4. Corey Haim

From the sublime to the ridiculous. Corey Haim's story would be tragic if it weren't such a cliche: child actor finds incredible success at a young age and screws it for himself faster than you can yell, "snort that coke!" Haim's early life is inextricably linked to Corey Feldman's, who he co-starred with in many films including Dream A Little Dream and the aforementioned Lost Boys. After picking up a few drug habits on the sets of some of his early films, Haim went off the rails and became steadily more and more unreliable, something that seemed unthinkable to the legion of fans who knew him as the charming, cheeky but essentially good-natured boy next door. The 1990s and 2000s didn't treat Haim particularly well, who took the occasional small role when he wasn't in rehab (he totalled 15 visits to clinics during his life) or living destitute with his cancer-stricken mother, allegedly begging pawn shop owners for money to buy slices of pizza. In 2007 he reteamed with Feldman for the reality show The Two Coreys, in which Haim moved in with Feldman and his then-wife and tried to turn his life around. The series was cancelled mid-way through season 2 as the actor turned to prescription medication and regularly overdosed.

In 2010 Corey Haim collapsed and was rushed to hospital, being pronounced dead later that evening. He had died of pneumonia, but the lifestyle he'd been living had most certainly led him to that end.