'The Lost Boys': Where are the cast of the 1980s classic today?

The Lost Boys is back in UK cinemas this weekend, more than 30 years after it first took a bite out of multiplex audiences in 1987. Joel Schumacher’s cult classic has been given a fresh coat of paint by Warner Bros in the form of a 4K restoration and so it’s spending a little while in cinemas in time for Valentine’s Day.

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Focusing on new arrivals to a Californian town hiding a dark, vampiric secret, the film was a critical and commercial success on its initial release. From a production budget of just $8.5m (£6.5m), the movie brought in $32.2m (£24.7m) at the US box office. Sequels and comic books followed, with a Lost Boys TV series still in the works today after years of development.

The movie helped to launch the careers of its young stars, featuring some of the biggest breakout performers of teen cinema at the tail end of the 1980s. But what happened to those cast members?

Kiefer Sutherland

Of all of the cast members of The Lost Boys, it’s Sutherland who went on to become the most notable household name. The role of vampiric biker gang leader David was his second memorable teen movie appearance after he showed up as the bully Ace in Rob Reiner’s terrific Stand By Me. In the 1990s, he played major parts in films including Flatliners and the English-language remake of The Vanishing.

He achieved the height of his fame in the noughties when he took on the lead role of counter-terrorism hardman Jack Bauer in TV series 24. Sutherland played the role from 2001 until 2010 and won an Emmy, a Golden Globe and two Screen Actors Guild Awards for his work on the show.

Read more: Sutherland reveals violent Lost Boys deleted scene

In more recent years, he played the lead role in Netflix drama Designated Survivor until it was cancelled in July 2019 and made a cameo in the 2017 Flatliners remake. He has also been working on his country music career, releasing second album Reckless & Me in 2019.

Jason Patric

The Lost Boys was only Patric’s second film credit, portraying Michael — the older of the two siblings who move to California at the start of the story. His movie career afterwards was variable to say the least. His scenes were cut from Terrence Malick’s The Thin Red Line and he turned down the role in The Firm which ultimately went to Tom Cruise and became a hit.

Patric appeared in Speed 2: Cruise Control and received strong reviews for his portrayal of an undercover drug cop in Joe Carnahan’s Narc. He then played major roles in a selection of successful and well-reviewed Broadway plays. More recently, he portrayed Dr Theo Yedlin in M. Night Shyamalan’s TV series Wayward Pines.

Corey Haim

Corey Haim’s career in the wake of portraying the younger of the two protagonists, Sam, in The Lost Boys was a troubled one, marked by more than a dozen spells in rehab as he tried to deal with his drug addiction. He later said he first tried marijuana on the set of The Lost Boys. Haim became best friends with his Lost Boys co-star Corey Feldman, with the duo known in the press as The Two Coreys — a moniker which would later become the title of a reality show featuring the pair in the noughties.

His post-80s career was marked by drug problems and he starred largely in direct-to-video projects, often alongside Feldman. Though the two had a rocky relationship that was often complicated by Haim’s personal issues, Feldman has defended his friend and claimed that sexual abuse by a Hollywood mogul during their teenage years was a huge factor in both of their lives.

Haim died in March 2010 at the age of 38 as a result of pneumonia, though initial reports claimed a drug overdose was the cause. In May of that year, the Los Angeles coroner ruled that drugs were not a “significant contributing factor” in his passing.

Corey Feldman

Feldman rocketed to fame in the 80s with roles in Stand By Me, The Goonies and Gremlins as well as playing self-proclaimed vampire hunter Edgar Frog in The Lost Boys, becoming one of the most sought after child stars in Hollywood. This proved to be the peak of Feldman’s acting career which, like Haim’s, was troubled by drug addiction shortly afterwards.

Read more: Feldman reunites with Goonies co-star

In the noughties, he worked with Haim again on The Two Coreys and subsequently appeared on numerous reality TV programmes, including ITV’s Dancing On Ice in 2012. The following year, he released his memoir Coreyography, which detailed his relationship with Haim and featured several allegations of sexual abuse in Hollywood during the 1980s.

Feldman has become an advocate for sexual abuse victims in recent years and has crowd-funded a documentary, provisionally titled Truth: The Rape of the Two Coreys. He told The Guardian this year that he believes the film is being suppressed because “nobody wants to go after the bad guys”. The star has also back-tracked on his long-term support for Michael Jackson in the wake of revelations in the Leaving Neverland documentary.

Dianne Wiest

Unlike the younger cast members of The Lost Boys, Wiest was already a star when she took on the role of Michael and Sam’s recently divorced mother. After an accomplished stage career, she had appeared in Footloose and won an Oscar the year before The Lost Boys arrived for her supporting performance in Woody Allen comedy Hannah and Her Sisters.

Read more: Wiest reveals she is struggling to pay rent

After The Lost Boys, Wiest won another Oscar for Allen’s Bullets Over Broadway in 1994 and also earned a pair of Emmys for her work on Road to Avonlea and In Treatment. Her big screen work has dried up a little in recent years, but she appeared last year as the ex-wife of Clint Eastwood’s protagonist in The Mule.

Alex Winter

Before portraying the ill-fated bloodsucker Marko in The Lost Boys, Alex Winter was already an accomplished stage performer and had co-directed a number of short films while studying at New York University. He made an impact as Marko and then rocketed to fame just a few years afterwards with the 1989 release of Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure, in which he appeared as Bill S. Preston alongside Keanu Reeves as Theodore Logan.

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Bill & Ted would go on to define Winter’s career from an acting perspective, while his directing work has largely focused on documentaries about technology and the online world. He will return to the role of Bill S. Preston this year for Bill & Ted Face the Music.

Jamison Newlander

Newlander remains best known as an actor for appearing in The Lost Boys, playing the other half of the Frog brothers alongside Feldman. He would reprise the role with Feldman in 2010 threequel Lost Boys: The Thirst after having scenes deleted from 2008’s Lost Boys: The Tribe.

Away from vampires, Newlander had a brief role in the horror-Western Bone Tomahawk and has become a prolific podcaster, as well as crafting Wikisoap — the first ever user-generated soap opera.

Jami Gertz

Jami Gertz had a big year in 1987, announcing her arrival as a screen personality with her roles as the half-vampire Star in The Lost Boys and the friend of Robert Downey Jr.’s doomed drug addict in Less Than Zero.

Read more: Gertz causes stir with NBA appearance

She briefly worked for French fashion house Lanvin but returned to acting in the 1990s with a role in the blockbuster Twister. Gertz turned down Jennifer Aniston’s role of Rachel in Friends, which she almost certainly regrets, but achieved success and an Emmy nomination with a recurring guest slot on Ally McBeal. She would later lead sitcom Still Standing alongside Game of Thrones alum Mark Addy.

Gertz also co-owns the Atlanta Hawks NBA basketball team with husband Antony Ressler.

Billy Wirth

Billy Wirth has had a career primarily in the world of independent cinema since he played the vampire Dwayne in The Lost Boys, with the horror hit still his most recognisable role. As well as acting, he has worked as a writer and director, with his 2001 film MacArthur Park competing for the Grand Jury Prize at the Sundance Film Festival. He also competed on American Gladiators in 1989.

Ed Herrmann

A veteran narrator of TV history programmes as well as a star of both stage and screen, Ed Herrmann portrayed head vampire Max in The Lost Boys. He had previously collaborated with co-star Dianne Wiest on theatre projects and had been nominated for Emmys for playing President Franklin D. Roosevelt in several television movies.

He would go on to portray Richard Gilmore for the entire first run of comedy series Gilmore Girls and play a number of supporting roles as a prolific character actor in movies. His final big screen appearance was in 2014 slasher The Town That Dreaded Sundown. Herrmann passed away as a result of brain cancer in December 2014, at the age of 71.

The Lost Boys is in UK cinemas today as part of a new re-release.