Patrick Kilpatrick: A Good Guy!

All Photos:  Alan Mercer

As rugged as he is genteel, the six-foot two-inch 220-lb Patrick Kilpatrick has been one of the finest screen and television character actors and villains of his generation, playing against a spectrum of Hollywood's leading action heroes, while occasionally delivering the redemptive, even sensitively challenged, hard-edged heroic role.

After nearly dying in a car crash as a teenager, he instead rehabilitated to largely do his own stunts in 100 plus films and TV projects. His action film appearances span a multitude of genres and embrace an international Who's Who of leading men: 'Replacement Killers' against Chow Yun Fat; Arnold Schwarzenegger and James Caan in 'Eraser,' 'Last Man Standing' opposite Bruce Willis, 'Under Siege II' opposite Segal, 'Presidio' opposite Sean Connery and Mark Harmon, two award-winning and highly rated original cable westerns opposite Tom Selleck -- 'Last Stand at Saber River' and 'Crossfire Trail,' one western opposite Sam Elliot and Kate Capshaw -- HBO's Premiere Films adaptation of Louis L' Amour's 'The Quick and the Dead,' and the ever-popular action mainstay 'Death Warrant' opposite Jean Claude Van Damme, as The Sandman. He has even done battle with the largest mammal on earth in 'Free Willy III.'

The versatile Kilpatrick has played leads in everything from 'American Playhouse' to a film debut in Nick Roeg's masterwork 'Insignificance', to Shakespeare's 'Anthony and Cleopatra' at Los Angeles Theater Center in the hands of Academy Award-winning director Tony Richardson.

His resume embraces reoccurring roles on such hit television shows as 'Dr. Quinn, Medicine Woman' and 'Tour of Duty,' 'Dark Angel,' Stephen King's popular miniseries 'The Stand,' HBO's 'ARLI$$' and many, many more. It was his work on James Cameron's 'Dark Angel' that led Spielberg to seek him out for 'Minority Report.'

In one year and a half whirlwind period, he did five major studio films, two independents and 27 television guest star spots on 18 different shows. The pace continues to the present with appearances on 'Boomtown,' 'Las Vegas,' 'Blind Justice,' 'CSI-Las Vegas,' '24' as Secret Service Agent Dale Spaulding -- "the man who 'killed' Jack Bauer", and hit shows 'Criminal Minds' and James Wood's 'Shark.'

Kilpatrick, president and CEO of Uncommon Dialogue Films, Inc. (UDF), is the writer/producer/director of the upcoming film 'Vain Attempt.' In addition to 'Vain Attempt' UDF has a dynamic slate of arresting movies including 'Naked Warriors' set in the Pacific in 1943, 'Lady Pirates,' 'The End of the Onslaught' set in WWII Germany and 'Nine Heroes in the Rape of Nanking' set in 1937 China, plus two documentaries and a television series 'Natural Laws' concerning US Fish and Wildlife Special Agents amidst global threat of illegal wildlife traffic and ecological calamity. He travels the world organizing film, ecological business development and acting.

The first thing I noticed about Patrick Kilpatrick, after his physicality, is his intelligence. The man is whip smart and he has a conscience. He is no nonsense and to the point. He cares about what he is doing with his time on this earth.

He is hosting a great benefit called "The Hollywood Celebrity Sporting Clays Invitational' on Oct. 9 at Triple B Clays Shotgun Sporting Park in El Monte, California for the City of Hope Hospital. A group of A-listers will take part in a fun-filled day of World Class eco-friendly sporting clays shooting to benefit 'Be The Match Marrow Registry City of Hope.' The Mobile Bone Marrow Testing Unit will be on-hand for celebrities and all event participants to be entered into the national registry with the ultimate goal of finding a match for an adult or child in need of bone marrow, or stem-cell treatment.

AM: Patrick, I know you as one of the busiest actors in town. Why do you think this is?

PK: I have the curse of a liberal arts education. If I'm not writing I'm acting or I'm raising the money for a movie. I started out as an advertising writer and a journalist.

AM: Who did you write for?

PK: I wrote for most of the major magazines in New York. I was always doing a lot of different kinds of things. I'm always active because I have work coming to me from a lot of different directions. As far as acting goes, it all comes down to auditioning.

AM: Do you have to audition for all your parts?

PK: I do get offered work pretty regularly. I'm either being offered work by people who know me personally and have worked with me before or I'm auditioning. Really an actors life comes down to auditions.

AM: Are you good at auditioning?

PK: Well I made it my business. When I first started out I realized that you can be a great actor and if you weren't brilliant at auditioning you weren't going to get a chance to exhibit your great acting. I made a science out of how to make that work.

AM: What motivated you?

PK: I had a family with two young boys to raise so I really needed to put money on the table. They had to grab me screaming out of the audition experience. They had to give me the work before I would let go.

AM: You come across so physical. You have a big presence and you seem like a physical guy so when you said you were a writer it seems a little off beat!

PK: Yeah it's always been that way. Very early in my life my parents were devoted to education. My Mother was an educator. My Dad was as well in the beginning of his life so education and language were always very important to them. It was very easy for me to get praise from them by coming up with new words. My earliest heroes were writers because I read a book a day for years. I absorbed all of these literary heroes. That's all I wanted to do when I was in college was to become a writer. So I went to New York and did that.

AM: So that kept you happy for the time being!

PK: After a while I wanted more and I was sort of always doing the same thing. For journalism I would pick something that I wanted to write about, but I would actually go out and do it. So in a real sense of the word I was acting and performing and then just writing about it. That became writing for advertising and publicity writing. Then I wrote plays and that took me into acting. Then we started writing scripts. This was just a natural out growth of all that stuff.

AM: You were in an automobile accident when you were very young. How did that affect you?

PK: Yes when I was seventeen. I had been doing mostly athletics up until that time and then I got in the car of the captain of the football team who was a couple years older. I thought it was really cool that he asked me to go out with him. What I didn't know was he was drunk. At that time the drinking age in Connecticut was twenty-one and in New York state it was eighteen so kids were always getting killed going back and forth between those two places. I wasn't drinking but I actually fell asleep in the car and he had the accident. We went to pick up his girlfriend who I liked a lot. Initially it was pretty traumatic but it really changed my life for the better.

AM: How?

PK: I couldn't play sports for three years. That's when I became a writer. It's all because of that experience. By the time I got my physicality back and made my way to acting I was an actor with the mind of a writer and I think it's a great combination.

AM: Why is that?

PK: Most actors who keep working are producing, writing and directing their own movies. It doesn't matter if it's comedy, drama or whatever. 'Reno 911' is a good example. Those guys did all that writing.

AM: So you really believe in this strongly don't you?

PK: Any actor that doesn't have a real cognizant foundation of writing is really missing the boat. I recommend that to all my acting students.

AM: You also teach.

PK: Yeah about a year ago I started teaching every Monday. We simulcast an hour of it on the internet every week.

AM: What got you started teaching?

PK: This came out of directing. I was auditioning a lot of actors and I didn't see the kind of skill set I had developed doing it for twenty-five years, out in the real work-a-day world. It's pretty easy for people to get academic acting studies but they are not getting schooled in auditions and what it's really like in the world to get the material at ten o'clock at night and have to know it by the next morning at ten. You gotta go in at performance level. That skill encompasses everything. I started teaching because of that and it's been very rewarding.

AM: You play a lot of bad guys in the movies!

PK: Well I was six feet two and a half inches and two hundred plus pounds right from the get go! I had this physical presence so I was always getting roles even on stage. I ended up being stunt coordinator for a lot of stage productions for Tony Richardson. Physical was always involved.

AM: Do you like playing the bad guy?

PK: You know I love acting and it's been a really rich experience. Certainly I like jumping back and forth but I don't get as many opportunities to play good guys.

AM: Is it different kind of acting to play the good guy?

PK: Playing the good guy for me is relatively easy. Playing villains takes a lot more energy. Depending on the role. They usually pay a lot more money to the good guy so I'd love to play more of them!

AM: You've certainly done a lot with the parts you've taken.

PK: There are some pretty rich bad guy parts. The key is to not make them all the same person. Sometimes there can be a temptation to do that if the writing isn't changing from project to project. The key is to create something that is original and keeps yourself stimulated. It's all just people that you are playing.

AM: You've been fortunate and deserving to get all these parts.

PK: I sometimes think it depends on how much hard work and junk you are going to crawl through to get it. The audition process doesn't really respect a person. You've got to be willing to not only go through it but to embrace it as a creative crucible, something that you can really enjoy doing. I like doing a lot of different things.

AM: That brings me to this charity you are involved with. How are you involved?

PK: One of the great things about having some celebrity as an actor is you get asked to do some really cool stuff. Either training for a part or to help out a charity or whatever it is. I get to train with Navy Seals or go out with police, study fencing and so many things. When the charity things come along I think public notoriety isn't worth much unless you're making some kind of mark on the world so I try to have a positive effect on as many charities as possible.

AM: Do you focus on any specific types of charities?

PK: Luckily they've been all over the place from juvenile diabetes to literacy to feed the children, whatever it is. This particular event came about because I'm always playing a bad guy and they are always placing fire arms in my hands. I began studying weapons like pistols, shotguns and rifles. I would train with the LAPD.

AM: Did that open you up to want to learn more about fire arms?

PK: I began to find that I really loved competitive shooting. Shooting clay pigeons became my golf. Really it's kind of a meditation for me. It is virtually like a golf course. There's twenty-five stations. You can even use a cart sometimes to go around them. If you're an actor and you're into outdoor sports people send you stuff like books on the topic.

AM: So have you been into this for a while now?

PK: I've been shooting a long time and I knew a lot of people. I'm really an advocate of the shooting sport. I think it's a great thing for young people to get involved in responsibly as a rite of passage. My two sons who are thirteen and eighteen have been shooting from a very early age. It's natural for me to end up hosting an event.

AM: Have you hosted events before?

PK: I've done a lot of veterans events. We really wanted to do something that had to do with a hospital and children. Cancer survivors this time. My Dad died of bone marrow cancer. City of Hope just came to us. Karen Purvis who is one of our producers had a working relationship with them so we were able to get into that. When you begin meeting these survivors and start chatting with them, it's pretty crazy. It really kind of brings it home. I do this event called 'The Rally for Kids With Cancer' and it's all fun and games with celebrities and then all of a sudden you meet the kids who are suffering from terminal cancer then it strikes home! I'm so happy to do it. Come on, I just hope we do something positive.

AM: Obviously this is part of your calling!

PK: Well I've always been in to physical fitness and organic food.

AM: You eat organic? Have you been doing this a long time?

PK: In a capitalist society, and I mean that affectionately, what you buy is really important. Basically I spend my money on organic food. That doesn't mean every time I go to a restaurant or a friends house I have to have organic.

AM: How long have you been into organic food?

PK: When I was nine years old I made a decision and I don't know why, but I said to myself that rich or poor I'm going to eat well. I didn't know it at the time but I was pretty much raised on an organic farm by my parents. So when I left home I was still into it. We've got one body, we've got one voice. I had childhood asthma and a back problem from the accident so I was always into maintaining myself as long as I could.

AM: You keep educating yourself.

PK: Rejuvenation is a subject of interest for me. There's no question buying organic and using organic food in an elegant gourmet way is superior. It's good for you. It's good for the top soil of the country. I think it works on a lot of levels. It's good for agricultural workers because they don't use all the toxins in the production of it. As a result we spend less tax dollars on medical payments. I do think it's a cool thing. I'm not fanatical but I really do put my money where my mouth is on that issue.

AM: What is your main goal with this event?

PK: What we are really trying to do with the event is a multi-purpose goal. I want to bring shooting sports into the main stream in Hollywood. There's a lot of misinformation about it. People don't realize this but hunters, shooters and fisherman provide about 85% of the conservation dollars on the planet. I want to get it properly aligned with the green movement. The food we will be serving and even some of the gifting items will be a reflection of that eco bent.

AM: That's a good idea!

PK: The outdoor sport and the eco movement belong together. So it's not only to raise the money for the charity, there is a sort of a political impact to it. If anybody is in the place to do it, I guess I am. Not only was I already working with actors but we were cultivating relationships with them because of my film company.

AM: What do you say to people who are intimidated by shooting?

PK: Most people who come out to start sporting clays say it is so much fun, particularly women. It's like an adult video game. The second amendment and responsible gun ownership is really important. It's one of the key aspects of the bill of rights. It needs to be carried into the twenty-first century. If you have any activity you have to cultivate the young people. If you don't the lifeblood of it goes out. We've got the boy scouts acting like pullers at the stations. We have very beautiful models and very accomplished actors and actresses acting as auction people. It's going to be a great event.

To learn more about Patrick Kilpatrick's Charity Event visit http://hollywoodsportclays.com/index.html