Corey Haim has died aged 38 in Los Angeles.

The 1980s teen heartthrob, best known for his roles in Lucas and The Lost Boys, died in the early hours of Wednesday at Providence St Joseph Medical Centre in Burbank, Los Angeles County coroner Cheryl MacWillie said.

An autopsy will determine the cause of death and there were no other details, she said.

Police said there was no evidence of foul play.

Haim had flulike symptoms before he died and was getting over-the-counter and prescription medications, police said. The cause of death is unknown.

“He could have succumbed to whatever (illness) he had or it could have been drugs. Who knows?” police sergeant William Mann said. “He has had a drug problem in the past.”

Haim was taken by ambulance to the hospital from an apartment in Los Angeles near Burbank. The enormous complex is known as Oakwood and is popular with young actors, police sergeant Michael Kammert said.

Haim acknowledged his struggle with drug abuse to The Sun in 2004.

“I was working on Lost Boys when I smoked my first joint,” he told the newspaper. “I did cocaine for about a year and a half, then it led to crack.”

Haim said he went into rehabilitation and was put on prescription drugs. He took both stimulants and sedatives such as Valium.

“I started on the downers which were a hell of a lot better than the uppers because I was a nervous wreck,” he said. “But one led to two, two led to four, four led to eight, until at the end it was about 85 a day.”

In 2007, he told ABC’s Nightline that drugs hurt his career.

“I feel like with myself I ruined myself to the point where I wasn’t functional enough to work for anybody, even myself. I wasn’t working,” he said.

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A literary phenomenon that has created one of the the great female anti-heroes, The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo deserves your attention. If you are not already in love with Lisbeth Salander, believe me, you soon will be.

For the as yet uninitiated still wondering what all the fuss is about, here’s a simple blaggers’ guide to The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo to ensure you won’t be caught short at the water fountain not knowing your Blomkvists from your Bergers. We’re good like that.

· Blomkvist is our male protagonist, a womanising, chain-smoking caffeine fiend – wrongly accused of slander and fighting the good fight to clear his name

· Lisbeth Salander is our female protagonist, a womanising, chain-smoking caffeine fiend – wrongly accused of being mentally incapable. The similarities end there…

· Lisbeth Salander is a hacker of extraordinary skill and ability – she’s a Mac, not a PC

· Millenium is a hard hitting, bad guy exposing magazine feared by soulless money grabbing corporations the world over – and co-owned by Blomkvist

· Henrik Vanger is the aging patriarch of the famous and rich Vanger family who has been haunted for the last 14 years by the mysterious disappearance of his niece – Harriet Vanger. He employs Blomkivist to discover and document his family’s many dark secrets

· Middle aged traditional journo Blomkvist and wild child hacker Salander team up personally and professionally to solve the great Vanger mystery. Opposites really do attract!

· The Vanger Family is a tangled web of Nazi supporters, sadists and emotionally stunted aristocrats. Christmas is a blast…

· Lisbeth is under legal guardianship after being declared mentally incompetent and spending a good proportion of her teenage years in a metal asylum. She DOES NOT like authority

· The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo is the first in a three part trilogy – oh yes, there’s more

· The millennium trilogy has sold more than 25 million copies worldwide. The book’s author died under mysterious circumstances and never lived to see the phenomenon his work would become

· Hell hath no fury like a Lisbeth Salander scorned

· The millennium trilogy has been known to cause extreme insomnia, eye strain, paranoia and the desire to thoroughly kick someone’s ass. You have been warned.

Check out the novel on Ciao!

The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo hits UK cinemas on 12 March.