"Is that what I've become, a piece of meat?" Renfro wonders when I tell him I spent a good five minutes earlier today perusing the Brad Renfro Shirtless Gallery on an Internet fan site. The Knoxville,Tennessee native takes a swig of Coke in the lobby of L.A.'s trendy W Los Angeles hotel and laughs.
"I guess it's quite flattering, but you'll see-I'm not quite the cheeseball you think".

Few in Hollywood think that Brad Renfro is a cheeseball. He's generally considered a talented young actor whose career seems to be picking up (he's appearing in three films this year-Bully, Deuces Wild, and Ghost World) depite personal problems that followed on the box-office disappointment of 1998's Apt Pupil. Renfro has been arrested twice, after all-in 1998 for driving under the influence of marijuana (cocaine was also found), and last year, when he and a friend tried to steal a 45-foot yacht from a Florida harbor.

"Regarding the yacht thing" I say as gingerly as possible,"Is it true that you forgot to untie the boat from the dock before attempting to take off?"
"Yeah", says Renfro, with a nervous laugh. "Aw, come on! Put two and two together. It was a joke that went very sour. I'm not that ignorant".

"How was your mug shot?"
"I was quite pleased with it," he says with a smile. "I was beefier then. I beefed up for Bully so I could kick ass".

In Bully, Renfro plays a real-life Florida teen named Marty Puccio,who, along with a group of friends(played by Bijou Phillips and Rachel Miner, among others),brutally murdered Bobby Kent(Nick Stahl), the young man who'd
been tormenting them for years.

After Bully, Renfro will hit screens with Stephen Dorff and Fairuza Bulk in Deuces Wild, a drama about rival street gangs set in 1950's Brooklyn from director Scott Kalvert(The Basketball Diaries). Moviegoers will also see Renfro in the adaptation of the comic book Ghost World from director Terry Zwigoff(Crumb). He plays Josh, the charmer who comes between two friends(Thora Birch and Scarlett Johansson)who are bonded by bitterness.

"I just saw Deuces Wild,"I tell Renfro,"and I swear, it must have the highest budget for bruise makeup in the history of Hollywood."
"If you were in that movie, you got the shit beat out of you at least once, whether you were a guy or a girl", says Renfro, whose make-out scene with Balk in a swimming pool is sure to delight the fans of his shirtless Web site.
"If you like ass-whupping and you like leather, this is your film."

"I loved how they shot Dorff in slow motion like he was the ultimate bad-ass," I remark. "Isn't he, like, 5'5''?"
"No ass-whupping respect for Dorff,huh?" Renfro says with a laugh. "Well, we love him. He's good folk."

As that turn of phrase suggests, no matter how many 5-star hotels he crashes in, Renfro will always be a Tennessee boy at heart. When he's not shooting, he can be found in Knoxville, playing blues guitar in his modest two-bedroom house or floating down the Little Pigeon River on a raft he bought at Wal-Mart. As for L.A., he loves the occasional small dose.

Hollywood came knocking on Renfro's Tennessee door when, at age 10, he so impressed D.A.R.E officers he'd worked with on a school anti drug production that they referred him to famed casting director Mali Finn. At the time, Finn was combing the country for a boy to play opposite Susan Sarandon in Joel Schumacher's thriller The Client.

After The Client hit big, the 12-year-old Renfro, who'd been raised by his grandmother since his parents divorced when he was five, began to work steadily in big-studio films such as Tom and Huck and the ensemble Sleepers, in which he played the younger version of Brad Pitt's character.

"What's the most trouble you ever got into in school before you dropped out?" I ask.

"Do you think your past problems cost you parts?" I ask.
"I'm sure they have," he replies. "But I've never had any kind of flak while filming a movie. I haven't missed a day of work or been late in my life."
Renfro has seen other actors cause set difficulties, though: "The wackiest thing was this one actor got bitten by his old lady and caught gangrene and it shut down production for two weeks."

"If I guess who it was, will you tell me I'm right?" I ask, digging out his list of credits. "Kevin Bacon from Telling Lies in America? Dustin Hoffman from Sleepers? Oh, I know. Jonathan Taylor Thomas from Tom and Huck!"

Just as I think Renfro is this close to giving up the goods, a sweet-looking young woman with strawberry blonde pigtails approaches. Renfro introduces her as Jenny, his girlfriend of one month. She's an architecture student at the University of Tennesee he met through a mutual friend. I ask Brad if Jenny knew he was famous when they spoke.

"I don't think so," says Brad, taking her hand. "Yes I did," corrects Jenny.
"But if wasn't like, 'Hey, I remember you from Tom and Huck.'"
As I walk the couple to the elevator, a buxom blonde recognizes Brad and gives him a wave. He smiles shyly.

"You seem to have friendly fans," I note.
"For the most part," says Renfro. "One time I was recognized on an airplane and the guy said, 'Aren't you that fucker that tried to steal that yacht?'"