Whatever happened to Jackie Earle Haley? A promising young actor in the 1970s, he featured in TV shows such as The Partridge Family before making his cinema debut at 14, as the boy stomped to death by the Donald Sutherland character in John Schlesigner's The Day of the Locust (1975).

He went on to play leading roles in The Bad News Bears (1976) and Peter Yates's cherishable Breaking Away (1979), but hasn't been seen in cinema's since he co-starred with a young Tom Cruise in Curtis Hanson's Losin' It, made in 1981 but not released until 1983.

Haley has made intermittent TV and direct-to-video appearances over the past 20 years, during which he worked as a limousine driver, furniture refinisher, security officer and pizza delivery man in Texas before directing commercials. He makes a comeback in All the King's Men, as the bodyguard of the Sean Penn character, which opens here today (see review, page 10), and gives an edgy, astutely judged performance as a paroled sex offender in Todd Field's drama, Little Children, released next Friday.