Patrick Fugit is an American actor who began his career in high school.
Best known for his role in the coming-of-age movie, Almost Famous, Fugit has been in the film and television industry for two decades.
While he may not be the same awkward teen from the 2000 movie, Patrick has spent his life taking on roles that he is just as proud of.
10 Cold Hard Facts About Patrick Fugit
Patrick Fugit grew up in a family who supported his creative endeavors, as long as he proved to be dedicated to whatever craft he chose.
He was born on October 27th of 1982 in Salt Lake City, Utah.
His father was an electrical engineer and his mother was a ballet instructor.
Fugit is the oldest of their children and has both a younger brother and a younger sister.
Thanks to his breakout role, Patrick Fugit was able to find plenty of work and befriend many popular stars, such as Kate Hudson and Brad Pitt.
While most people remember him for his first film, he has gone on to become a popular television actor and expand his creative career.
Although Patrick Fugit may not be as popular as he was after the debut of Almost Famous, he has managed to continue to work as an actor in the film industry and work alongside many great actors.
Fugit doesn’t let comparisons to his earlier years bother him, but instead, he focuses on the next big project he gets to be a part of.
1. A Trained Ballet Dancer
Patrick Fugit’s mother was a strict and popular ballet teacher in Salt Lake City, Utah.
Whether he and his two siblings wanted to be in ballet or not, it was a requirement from their mother that they learn and practice the art.
Through ballet, Fugit’s mother wanted to teach her children where dedication and resilience would get them in life.
The demanding schedule that ballet requires taught Fugit how to work under tense pressure and prepared him for his breakout role in Almost Famous.
During his ballet training, Fugit’s mother was especially particular about his and his siblings’ performances on and off of the stage.
She had zero tolerance for slacking or excuses, knowing that her children were more than capable of reaching her expectations.
The training he received from his mother really came in handy while working on scenes with fellow actor Philip Seymour Hoffman, who had a long history in theater and film.
Hoffman had a history of expecting a lot of his castmates and held the entire cast to a high level of professionalism.
While Hoffman was always willing to let Fugit know when something didn’t meet his expectations, he was never mean to young Fugit.
Oftentimes, Hoffman would playfully tease Fugit about the success he had managed to find from such a young age.
Patrick Fugit always appreciated the way that Philip Seymour Hoffman saw him as a professional, just the same as the rest of the cast.
He didn’t treat him differently just because he was young and inexperienced.
Having always been held to such a high standard and being given the belief that he could reach those standards through hard work is what helped Fugit slide gently into the world of entertainment.
The life skills he learned ballet prepared him for the professional world.
2. Began Acting In High School
Patrick Fugit was only 16 years old when he starred as the lead role in the coming-of-age movie that he is best known for.
However, Almost Famous wasn’t Fugit’s first role.
The first movie role that Patrick Fugit had was a young boy named Scott Blount in the 1998 horror film Legion of Fire: Killer Ants!
The movie also starred Julia Campell and Eric Lutes, but the made-for-television movie wasn’t well received.
Fugit continued to get television roles, appearing twice on the ’90s television show Touched by an Angel.
In the 1997 episode Nothing But Net, he was uncredited for his small background role.
He would appear again on the show the following year as a small character named Joey, but once again, he was uncredited for his work.
He was only 14 when he last appeared on the show.
The last television movie that Patrick Fugit did before landing his breakout role was the 1999 movie Stray Dog.
The movie served as a prequel to the television show called Caitlin’s Way.
While working on Stray Dog, Patrick Fugit got work alongside another Legion of Fire: Killer Ants star Kim Landry.
Similar to Fugit, she had also appeared in a couple of episodes of Touched by an Angel
During his earliest acting years, Fugit was stuck working close to home.
This ended up working in his favor when he landed the role of William Miller in Almost Famous.
For the film, director Cameron Crowe was looking for an actor as young, awkward, and inexperienced as the character, William.
However, Crowe was also looking for someone who could be professional and take the role seriously.
Whoever was going to get the role of William Miller was going to be working with incredibly popular actors such as Kate Hudson, Zooey Deschanel, and Jimmy Fallon.
3. Bonded With Brad Pitt Over PlayStation Games
During the early development of Almost Famous, director Cameron Crowe experimented with a combination of actors for different roles.
Right before Billy Crudup got the role of Russell Hammond, Brad Pitt was tapped to play Russell.
For four months, Cameron Crowe and Brad Pitt worked on developing the character of Russell Hammond.
During this time, they were still holding screen test auditions for the role of William Miller.
While going in for another screen test, Crowe introduced Patrick Fugit to Pitt.
It was clear to Pitt that the young actor was nervous around him, so Pitt began asking Fugit about a popular PlayStation game called Cool Boarders.
Fugit, like many other kids his age, happened to love the game and played it regularly.
While talking about the game, Pitt discovered that Fugit knew tricks that he had yet to figure out or even heard of.
In the early years of video games, there wasn’t a way to find out information on lesser-known games if you got stuck.
Secrets of games would often go undiscovered by players unless they heard about the secret from another player.
This was a golden opportunity for Pitt to learn the tricks he needed for the game, and he was elated to learn them from Fugit.
This gave the two actors time to relax and bond, proving that the pair would have excellent chemistry on screen.
Eventually, Brad Pitt left Almost Famous because he wasn’t as fond of the character as he had thought he would be.
He especially didn’t like the age difference between Russell Hammond and Penny Lane.
While the cast was saddened by Pitt leaving the film, they also understood his reasoning and were glad to embrace Billy Crudup’s portrayal of the character.
4. Was Featured At The 2020 Tribeca Film Festival
Ever since Almost Famous, Patrick Fugit has consistently continued acting and expanding his creative career.
Although some may see him as a one-hit-wonder, some of his most recent work has greatly impressed film critics.
My Heart Can’t Beat Unless You Tell It To was featured as part of the Tribeca Film Festival’s 2020 Selection.
The 90-minute movie had Fugit playing Dwight, a man who spends his nights looking for people to drain blood from for his sick brother.
Dwight hates the fact that he is killing people who he believes nobody will miss, but he needs their blood for his brother.
All Dwight has left is his young brother and his sister, who is barely holding the family together.
The entire cast was applauded for their terrifying yet heartbreaking performances.
This cast included Owen Campbell as Thomas and Ingrid Sophie Schram as Jessie.
The film was created on a micro-budget, and Patrick Fugit was one of the producers.
The other producers for the short film include Kenny Oiwa Riches, Anthony Pedone, Jesse Brown, and Ian Peterson.
Although the film didn’t win any awards, it was praised for its cinematography.
What made the film even more special was it was from up-and-coming filmmaker Jonathan Cuatras, who just recently graduated from film school in 2016 and became a Sundance Knight Fellow by 2019.
5. Patrick Fugit Is In A Popular Video Game
Patrick Fugit has always loved to play video games ever since he was a kid.
Like many other gamers, Fugit has been a loyal fan of PlayStation.
In 2020, he was able to make another dream become a reality by voice acting in the hit gaming sequel The Last of Us: Part II.
In the narrative-driven game, Patrick Fugit voiced and did the motion capture for the character Owen Moore.
The game was produced by the popular Naughty Dog games, the creators of Crash Bandicoot and the Uncharted series.
Having grown up a PlayStation kid, Patrick Fugit was elated to work at the gaming company that created some of his favorite childhood games.
While The Last of Us: Part II ended up doing exceptionally well, there were many bumps in the road for the game.
Naughty Dogs had game footage leaked, were forced to delay the game multiple times, and developers had to overwork to get the game out.
However, the results were a game with breathtaking graphics and a story to rival any movie from Hollywood.
Shortly after the release of the game, rumors began to speculate that the vice president of Naughty Dogs, Neil Druckmann, had slid himself into the game in the form of Owen Moore.
Speculators believed that he put the sex scene between Owen Moore and Abby Anderson to get the opportunity to motion capture the scene with Abby’s voice actress Laura Bailey.
However, it was Patrick Fugit who did everything to bring the character to life.
Laura Bailey quickly took to Twitter to set the record straight, shocked that fans of the series would jump to such a wild conclusion.
Despite the trouble that game saw before and right after its release, it was a massive hit among Last of Us fans.
6. Starred In A Movie With Matt Damon, Scarlett Johansson, And A Monkey
In 2011, Patrick Fugit would join Cameron Crowe once again to star in his 2011 movie, We Bought a Zoo.
The cast of the film also included Elle Fanning, Matt Damon, Scarlett Johansson, and Thomas Haden Church.
We Bought a Zoo was based on the book by Benjamin Mee, which was inspired by the true story of his life.
On a whim, Mee had bought and relocated his family to a countryside property that once was home to a zoo.
However, the zoo had fallen on hard times before Mee purchased it and was dwindling in quality and popularity.
When his wife passes away from cancer, Mee and his family are motivated to try and rebuild the zoo while learning to take care of the 200 different exotic animals that lived there.
We Bought Zoo was a large departure from Crowe’s usual work, but it was still incredibly personal to him.
His goal for the film was to bring joy to the viewers in the same way that the zoo animals brought joy to the mourning Mee family.
Although Patrick Fugit and Cameron Crowe had kept in touch over the years since Almost Famous, Fugit was nervous about their first meeting for the role.
Since the last time they had worked together, both Crowe and Fugit had grown as people and professionals.
Although Fugit was concerned about not being able to meet the expectation that Crowe and his other castmates would have for him, he once again saw the pressure as an opportunity for growth.
The meeting went extremely well, and Crowe told Fugit that his character would have a capuchin monkey companion right before leaving.
Fugit and his monkey castmate, Crystal, met before shooting began and formed a seamless relationship.
7. Has Children With Jennifer Del Rosario
Patrick Fugit has been with his longtime partner Jennifer Del Rosario for quite some time.
They started dating in 2014, two years after Fugit had dated fellow actress Megalyn Echikunwoke.
Although neither of them says much about their relationship in public, Fugit is no stranger to sharing sweet photos of himself and the love of his life.
The couple loves to travel around the world together, and they have been known to frequent Japan.
Together, they enjoy finding tasty food, watching anime, and practicing archery.
Not only is Jennifer Del Rosario an actress, but she is also a dedicated martial artist.
Del Rosario is best known for her roles in The Last Ship, Hollywood Wasteland, and Lost Tapes.
She loves sharing pictures on Instagram with sweet captions about Fugit and has never been afraid of public displays of affection.
While the couple may be generally quiet about their relationship, they’ve never been secretive about it.
They can often be seen together, walking the red carpet at film festivals and movie debuts.
The pair often refer to each other as best friends and teammates, which is exactly how they see each other.
They often talk about their gratitude for one another while making social media posts.
The couple may have been together for seven years and have a son named Ryker together, but they are in no hurry to get married, being happy with their relationship as it is.
8. Had His Own Band
When Patrick Fugit was only 16 years old, he and his best friend Dave Fetzer began practicing music together.
Fugit was a classical guitarist who used his skills to play folk and soft rock music.
According to Fugit, he and Fetzer accidentally formed a popular local band called Mushman that was known for their soothing blend of rock and folk music.
While they had begun playing music together when they were in high school, they had been best friends since they were in third grade.
Mushman started with just one gig, but they began to get more requests to play around Salt Lake City.
Although Fugit was fine with acting in front of a film crew, he was terrified to play guitar live on stage.
Fugit found it terrifying to play in front of people at first, but he later found it to be exhilarating.
He had goals for Mushman that included recording two albums, going on tour, and playing a whole lot of music.
Fetzer claimed that the band wasn’t anything serious and was just something that he and Fugit were doing for fun.
In 2004, the band released their first album called Eddie Do with the help of the recording label, Fox on a Hill.
Their second album, Lost Like Children, was released in 2008 with the same local recording label.
Sadly, the band never saw much success outside of their local area, but they were incredibly beloved by their fans.
When Dave Fetzer was 30 years old, he passed away unexpectedly from an unknown cause.
His bandmates and the local community were heartbroken by his passing.
Fetzer played a large role in his local theater and music community.
Fugit has stated that Fetzer played such a massive role in his career as an actor.
9. Created Music For A Film
With help from his bandmates of Mushman, Patrick Fugit created the music for his film Wristcutters: A Love Story.
Not only did Fugit create the soundtrack for the film in his early 20s, but he also starred as the main character of the film, Zia.
In the fantasy-comedy film, Zia has just committed suicide after a breakup and is sent to a special place in the afterlife that is for people who have committed suicide.
While working at a pizza joint, he finds out that his ex-girlfriend fell victim to a similar fate.
Zia is joined by Eugene, a Russian rocker who had electrocuted himself, on Zia’s quest to find his ex-girlfriend.
Although some viewers wanted to see more of a character arc come out of Fugit’s character, the movie is still seen as funny and endearing despite the subpar writing.
Not only did Fugit star and create the music for the movie, but he also did some of the still photography for the movie alongside photographer Giolliosa Fuller.
Wristcutters: A Love Story showed off the many different talents that Fugit has.
10. Currently Stars In A Show with Elizabeth Olsen
Patrick Fugit has never slowed down his acting career, despite how particular he can be about taking on roles.
For those who are curious to see how Fugit’s acting is these days, look no further than HBO Max’s True Crime series, Love and Death.
Patrick Fugit stars alongside Elizabeth Olsen in the retelling of the events surrounding the real murder of Betty Gore in 1980.
Olsen has taken on the role of the killer housewife Candy Montgomery while Fugit plays her husband, Pat Montgomery.
Pat and Candy Montgomery were active in their small-town community and the local church, similar to the Gores.
All things in the small town of Wylie, Texas are quiet and peaceful until someone picks up an ax.
The show is yet to come out, but fans of the cast members are excited to see them working together on a project that is out of all of their comfort zones.
Fugit has proven throughout his life that he thrives outside of his comfort zone and while the pressure to perform well is on.
With many people seeing this as Fugit’s chance to break back into the spotlight, they are eager to see his performance in the 2022 streaming service show.
As more actors accept the future that streaming services hold, many actors see the change as a chance to reintroduce themselves to newer, younger audiences.
While millennials may recognize Patrick Fugit’s face, Love and Death is his opportunity to introduce himself to the newest generation of young adults.
