Nicole Eggert reflects on the highs and lows of her connection with the late Corey Haim.
The 52-year-old Baywatch alum delves into the emotions tied to her engagement to Haim, who succumbed to pneumonia in 2010 at 38, amidst his struggles with addiction. The duo shared the screen in multiple films, such as 1992’s Blown Away and 1993’s Anything for Love.
Eggert is set to feature in the forthcoming four-part docuseries, Baywatch: The American Dream, directed by Matt Felker. The series will explore the lives of the 1989–2001 cast, both on and offscreen. The actress, a member of the Baywatch cast from 1992–1994, shares exclusively that while she cherished her time with Haim on set, behind closed doors, the dynamics turned “heavy.”
“It was scary to me. It was creepy,” she says. “I remember the first time I ever saw cocaine was from him, but he wasn’t trying to get me to do anything with him. It was his own private thing, which in hindsight would feel a little bit strange, but he was never trying to drag me into that.”
The two crossed paths in the early ’90s on the set of the film Blown Away, initiating a relationship that spanned from 1991 to 1993.
During that period, she reveals she was navigating her acting career while coping with three years of sexual abuse, spanning ages 14 to 17, allegedly by her Charles in Charge costar Scott Baio (who has consistently denied the allegations). Haim, who disclosed his own experience of sexual abuse, confided in Eggert about his trauma, yet she never shared her own.
“I think I was still just in denial. I mean, I’ve really been in denial about it until recently when I started unpacking it and being like, ‘Okay, here it is,’” she explains. “But also I felt ashamed. Unfortunately, you carry shame and you carry embarrassment. I didn’t ever want to be seen as a victim.” She continues: “Once I worked through it and I got through it, I didn’t like that, so I didn’t talk about that.”
Most of their two-year relationship and short-lived engagement centered around Haim’s ongoing struggles with addiction, a pervasive presence in his life. Eggert recalls taking him to the hospital as she didn’t know how to assist him during periods of drug unavailability.
“He’d go there [the hospital] to get stuff. When we’d be on set, producers supply it; they’d supply drugs, and prescriptions mostly is what I saw,” she reveals. “But no, if he was having the shakes and freaking out in the middle of the night and wanted to go to the emergency room, I’d take him. Because I wasn’t in that head space or in that — I didn’t know what to do. I was like, just take him to the hospital if that’s where he wants to go.”
Spending extensive time together on set, the former Charles in Charge star shares that she was able to find enjoyment with Haim, as they both navigated lives in the spotlight. Despite their engagement, from an external perspective, everything appeared to be going smoothly. “He proposed and we were working,” she says. “We were on set, everything was so fun.”
It was when they moved in together after the movie finished filming that Eggert witnessed Haim’s off-the-clock lifestyle. She “quickly” realized she “had to wash my hands of” the relationship.
After Eggert severed ties with Haim, she maintained sporadic contact with him. Despite their distance, up until his death almost two decades later, she expresses that she loved him.
Now a single mom raising two daughters, Keegan, 12, and Dilyn, 25, Eggert, who disclosed her stage 2 cribriform carcinoma breast cancer diagnosis in early December 2023, acknowledges the challenges but holds onto cherished memories of the late star. “I would always consider him a friend forever,” she says. “And I think he’d say the same.”
