Pat Healy ’93 arrived in Los Angeles 25 years ago with big-screen dreams. Career high points have come in waves for the Illinois State University acting alum, but he’s currently riding a tsunami of success, both professionally and personally.
The surge is thanks to recent roles in acclaimed series Better Call Saul and George & Tammy, the network drama Station 19, and in the Steven Spielberg feature film The Post. His latest work is a supporting role in Martin Scorsese’s Killers of the Flower Moon, now nominated for an Academy Award for Best Picture.
It’s a culmination of years of hard work and humility, and perhaps a touch of good fortune.
“I tell people to work hard and be a good person,” he said. “The rest is just luck and being in the right place at the right time.”
Healy heeds his own advice. He embraces the “working actor” label sometimes rejected by actors seeking leading man status. Healy checks his ego before he steps on the set. He comes prepared, ready for direction and collaboration. It’s gotten him far.
“The longer I stick around doing this, the more people I know, the more people like me,” he said. “I’ve proven myself.”
Coincidentally, professional achievement has arrived along with joy in his personal life; Healy is recently engaged and will be married later this year.
“It’s the most amazing time in my life,” he said. “It’s coming a little later in life for me, so I really appreciate it because I had kind of given up on it.”
Healy found love later in life, in part, because of an intense career focus. Inspired by family trips to the movies and VHS rentals of classic films, he caught the acting bug early. Healy excelled in his high school theatre program and found his way to Illinois State University, where he was mentored by Wonsook Kim College of Fine Arts faculty members like Kim Pereira and Connie de Veer.
“I learned a lot at ISU about just being passionate about it and committing to the work,” he said.
Healy performed in Illinois State theatre productions like Romeo and Juliet and Cloud Nine, and at the Illinois Shakespeare Festival (ISF); he was among those recognized in the ISF’s “40 Years/40 Actors” honor roll in 2017. He earned an internship at Steppenwolf Theatre Company in Chicago where his artistic talents were further nurtured.
“That changed the whole course of my life,” Healy said. “I got cast as an understudy, then cast in shows once my internship was over. Then I started auditioning for films and commercials, got an agent, started building up some credits, and then I moved to L.A.”
Life as an actor in Los Angeles has been consistently inconsistent. Though Healy scored a supporting role in Paul Thomas Anderson’s Magnolia less than a year after touching down at LAX, there have been troughs between waves of success. He’s utilized his writing talents to get through lean times and even taken on odd jobs. Less than five years ago, he was driving for Lyft, the ride-sharing service, during one of those stretches.
“I probably could have gotten away with not doing it, financially, but I’m glad that I did because I wasn’t just sitting around waiting for things to happen,” he said. “And within a month of doing it, I got offered a job. Then within two months, I got offered three roles at the same time and had to turn one down.”
Out of that period came roles in Better Call Saul and Killers of the Flower Moon, which afforded Healy opportunities to work with personal heroes. Acting opposite Carol Burnett in a scene or hearing that Scorsese liked his performance in an independent film from over a decade ago were especially fulfilling.
“Those jobs paid well, I got to work with great people, and work with great material,” Healy said. “You’re usually lucky to get one of those things. So, to get all three? It’s really nice.”
Killers of the Flower Moon offered a meaningful role and experience for Healy. Filmed over five months in Oklahoma in the summer of 2021 under COVID-19 protocols that afforded Healy an abundance of solitary downtime, the actor dug into the script. He read David Grann’s nonfiction book on which the film is based, chronicling a 1920s series of murders of Osage after oil is discovered on tribal land. Healy plunged deeper into the history to learn more about the largely unknown case, which even he was unaware of prior to accepting the part.
He brought it all with him to the role of John Burger, an FBI agent investigating the murders.
“I’m glad a project like this can remind people of the history,” Healy said. “And it’s history that wasn’t all that long ago.”
Killers of the Flower Moon is making the rounds this awards season. You won’t find Healy on many red carpets, but he’ll attend a few pre- and post-show events. Those will allow him to reconnect with collaborators he missed during recent actors’ and writers’ strikes, which caused the film’s premiere to be canceled.
The strikes had a silver lining for Healy, though, as it provided time with his new fiancé, with whom he soon hopes to start a family. He’s balancing work and life and finding that the two complement each other.
“I’m always looking to work more and challenge myself more, but it’s to serve my life,” he said. “And, in turn, the richness that the work brings to my life, I’m able to bring back to the work. It’s really cyclical in that way.”
“Working with these amazing people on these amazing projects? These have been some of the best professional experiences of my life.”
—Pat Healy ’93
Healy doesn’t know what’s next as Hollywood gets back to work now that the strikes have ended. He just hopes his next projects can be as fulfilling as his most recent ones. He wants to ride the wave for as long as it lasts.
“When I was younger, I don’t think I enjoyed the process as much. I waited for things like seeing myself on the screen and getting invited to the party, and it can be a bit of a hollow existence if you don’t fully experience the work,” he said. “But working with these amazing people on these amazing projects? These have been some of the best professional experiences of my life.”
