When Academy Award-winning actress-director Jodie Foster presented last month's memorial montage of film-industry people who died in 2006 during the Oscars, she remembered her "best friend," Honolulan Randy Stone.

The producer and casting director died of heart failure at his Beverly Hills home last Feb. 12 at age 48. He was born on Aug. 26, 1958.

He had developed a friendship with Foster, serving as executive producer of her inaugural film as director, 1991's "Little Man Tate."

At a memorial service held Feb. 16 at the Hollywood Forest Lawn Cemetery in California and at a Celebration of Life event Feb. 17 at the Beverly Hills Hotel, Foster delivered the eulogy.

"He was a talented, creative and particularly nice young man," said Marion F. Parmley, a longtime friend.

Stone also was an Oscar-winning producer.

His film "Trevor" won an Academy Award for live-action short subject in 1995. At the awards show, he pointed to Foster in the audience and said, "Jodie, I love you." The short, dealing with a teenager struggling with his sexual identity, aired on HBO and was screened locally in 1998 as part of the Hawai'i Gay and Lesbian Film Festival at the Hawai'i Theatre.

Along with Peggy Rajski and James Lecesne, the film's director and co-writer respectively, Stone co-founded The Trevor Project, inspired by the film. The Trevor Project operates the only nationwide 24/7 suicide-prevention helpline for gay and questioning youth. After Stone's death, his family requested that any donations in Stone's memory be made to Trevor, which has become one of his lasting legacies. Its Web site is www.thetre vorproject.org.

Stone did a few acting roles — as a child, he appeared on "Charlie's Angels" — but his Hollywood career evolved behind the cameras.

As a casting director, he is credited for casting David Duchovny and Gillian Anderson on Fox's "The X-Files" and Lance Henricksen on "Millennium."

His last project was the 2006 made-for-television film "A Little Thing Called Murder," which he wrote and executive-produced, based on the story of his next-door Hawai'i Kai neighbors, Sante and Kenny Kimes.

The movie, which earned a Satellite Award for best motion picture made for television, dealt with a real-life mother-and-son con artist team who worked as grifters and scammers in the 1990s. The pair was ultimately arrested for the murder of an 82-year-old socialite in New York, with the son later testifying against his mother in 2004.