LOS ANGELES — Brad Renfro, the young actor whose film career began at age 12 with "The Client" before dissolving as he struggled with drug and alcohol problems, has died. He was 25.

His body was found in his Los Angeles home early yesterday, his lawyer, Richard Kaplan, said. The cause of death was not immediately known.

Renfro served 10 days in jail in May 2006 after pleading no contest to driving while intoxicated and guilty to attempted possession of heroin.

His other credits include "Ghost World" and "The Jacket."

QUAID TELLS OF TWINS' STRUGGLE

Dennis Quaid says a nurse at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in L.A. reassured him his newborn twins were "fine" late the night of Nov. 18, even though earlier that day, Thomas Boone and Zoe Quaid, who were being treated for staph infections, were given the blood thinner heparin in a form 1,000 times stronger than the recommended dose.

In his first interview since the incident, Quaid tells the Los Angeles Times the hospital waited until the next morning to notify him of the overdose — and the fact that his 10-day-old babies had struggled all night for their lives.

Quaid says that night hospital staff didn't bother telling him or his wife, Kimberly, that something was amiss, even though records show that two hours before his call, nurses noticed that Zoe was bleeding at an intravenous needle site on her arm.

Nor did anyone call Quaid as doctors worked through the night to reverse the effects of the drug. (The babies made a full recovery.)

"Our kids could have been dying, and we wouldn't have been able to come down to the hospital to say goodbye," Quaid said.

HILTON TO RECEIVE 'PUDDING' AWARD

NEW YORK — Paris Hilton is heading to Harvard.

The 26-year-old actress-socialite has earned Harvard Lampoon's Hastiest Pudding of the Lampoon Award, the comedy magazine said yesterday.

She will visit Harvard on Feb. 6 to accept her award, said Regent Releasing, the company that's distributing her new comedy, "The Hottie & the Nottie."

SEGUNDO TO SHARE VIEWS ON 'IDOL'

Singer Jordan Segundo will resume his morning-after "American Idol" commentaries, beginning this morning, appearing on the Fox affiliate KHON-2's morning news show.

As he has done every season since becoming an "Idol" contestant six years ago, Segundo will watch the Tuesday night show and offer his take every Wednesday morning throughout the reality program's seventh season, which launched last night.

— Wayne Harada, Advertiser entertainment writer