[6] Haim made his feature film debut in the 1984 thriller Firstborn as a boy whose family comes under threat from his mother's violent boyfriend, played by Peter Weller.

[18][20] Haim began to gain industry recognition, earning his first Young Artist Award for the NBC movie A Time to Live,[19] in which he played Liza Minnelli's character's dying son.

"[17] Haim had read for River Phoenix's role in Stand By Me while eating lunch in director Rob Reiner's backyard, and got the part the same day that he was offered Lucas.

[22] Haim was nominated for a Young Artist Award for his performance as Lucas, and film critic Roger Ebert gave him a glowing review: "He creates one of the most three-dimensional, complicated, interesting characters of any age in any recent movie.

[24] In 1987, Haim had a featured role as Sam Emerson, the younger of two brothers, a comic-reading teen turned vampire hunter in Joel Schumacher's The Lost Boys.

[25] Shot between the Warner Brothers lot and the Santa Cruz Boardwalk, the young cast included Jason Patric, Kiefer Sutherland, Jami Gertz, and Corey Feldman, and the set was lively.

[33] Next came License to Drive, co-starring Feldman and Heather Graham, in which Haim played the lead role of Les, whose love life is crippled by a lack of a car.

[31] Haim was receiving nearly 2,000 fan letters a week and worked to avoid the potentially "psycho" girls who circled the block where he lived in an apartment downstairs from his mother's.

[35] Haim starred in the horror film Watchers, adapted from the Dean R. Koontz novel, in which he played a teen who befriends a highly intelligent dog altered by military research, leading to the two being pursued.

[22] On April 9, 1989, Haim appeared live onstage at Knott's Berry Farm with DJ "Hollywood" Hamilton as part of a teen anti-drugs campaign.

The thousand-strong audience of girls would not stop screaming and rushing the stage, and fire marshals had to escort Haim from the building amid fears for his safety.

[7] In 1990, Haim co-starred with Patricia Arquette in the sci-fi actioner Prayer of the Rollerboys, performing many of his own stunts in a tale of a teen who goes undercover to expose a racist gang leader.

Co-star Nicole Eggert, who was romantically involved with Haim at the time and also featured in The Double O Kid, later stated that on-set medics would facilitate his needs to keep him from withdrawing.

[44] In December 1992, Haim partnered in a lease-option on a 1922 Hancock Park mansion with his business manager, a party promoter named Michael Bass who had served two years in jail after a conviction for fraud.

[48] In 1996, Haim starred in four more direct-to-video films — Snowboard Academy, Demolition High, Fever Lake and Busted — the last also co-starring and directed by Corey Feldman.

[70] In 2009, Crank: High Voltage was released, which saw Haim sporting a blonde mullet alongside Jason Statham, Amy Smart, and Dwight Yoakam.

Haim completed two films scheduled for a 2010 release: the thriller American Sunset, in which he played a man who is abducted in the search for his missing wife,[71] and Decisions, shot in December 2009, in which his character is a cop working with troubled kids.

[74] During the filming of The Lost Boys, Haim bonded with Corey Feldman as they stayed in the hotel watching movies and visited the local arcade.

[26] Following the release of The Lost Boys, Haim visibly embraced the privileges of his new-found fame,[13][29] becoming a regular at Alphy's Soda Pop Club, a private nightclub for underage actors at the Hollywood Roosevelt Hotel.

They developed an idea for a reality show called Lost Boy Found, documenting Haim's addiction and recovery through music at Mac's studio, where he had been given a place to stay.

[81] In her memoir, Phillips recalled Haim's asking her permission to take out her daughter, and the moral conflict she experienced while smoking marijuana in front of him, saying: "Mixed feelings about Corey.

[81] During the filming of Without Malice (2000), Haim would reportedly halt production to call Toronto and check if his dog was dead, and sudden medical incidents required the filling of emergency prescriptions.

I mean, I can't begin to tell you, having him foaming at the mouth, coming downstairs and finding him that way and drooling and not able to speak, and me, having to put charcoal down his throat so that he could breathe.

"[17] On the advice of his lawyer, Haim went to a physician in California with the goal of sticking to a program to wean off pills without multiple doctors in order to demonstrate that he was working toward getting clean.

These claims were backed up in the documentary by Jamison Newlander, Haim's friend and co-star in The Lost Boys, and Feldman's ex-wife Susie Sprague.

"[51] Los Angeles police initially stated that Haim's death appeared to be an accidental overdose;[103] bottles containing Valium, Vicodin, Soma (a muscle relaxant), and Haloperidol (an antipsychotic) were retrieved.

[108][109] On May 4, 2010, the L.A. County Coroner's office autopsy report revealed that Haim died of diffuse alveolar damage and pneumonia, together with hypertrophic cardiomyopathy and coronary arteriosclerosis.

[123] Haim died with very little money, and his mother initially announced that the cost of his funeral would be covered by public funds provided by the city of Toronto as is customary in destitute cases.

[125] A $20,000 contribution was made by a memorabilia site to which Haim had sold items over the years,[126] but the company later put a stop payment on the check after it emerged that the funeral home had stepped in to cover the costs from the outset.

[127] Haim's personal effects were put up for auction on eBay by a cast member from A Time to Live, whose listings claimed that the family had asked him to sell the items as they needed money for burial expenses.