Leo Fitzpatrick

Leo Fitzpatrick was skating in Washington Square Park when Larry Clark spotted him.

They weren't looking for a professional actor to star in Kids in 1995. They wanted a kid who knew what the street was really like and had no stage-acting habits.

Fitzpatrick accepted the role of Telly without suspecting that the film would shake the foundations of American independent cinema.

It was a trial by fire.

During that shoot he had barely any experience in front of the camera. The raw nature of his work sparked a national debate about youth and AIDS in the United States. But he just wanted to keep living his life in New York without too many complications.

In 2001, he worked with Larry Clark again on the film Bully.

He played a supporting character in a setting just as seedy as his debut.

And the gamble paid off.

Television as a Dirty Refuge

He joined the series The Wire in 2002 to bring Johnny Weeks to life. His character was a drug addict who served as a tragic counterpoint to the Baltimore police plot. He appeared in a total of 16 episodes across the early seasons of the HBO drama.

Critics praised his ability to avoid coming across as a caricature in such an extreme role. But Fitzpatrick never felt comfortable with the dynamics of major Hollywood productions and preferred to keep a low profile.

In 2010, he appeared in the series Sons of Anarchy during a two-episode arc.

His screen presence has always carried a sense of authenticity that other method actors try to copy without success.

The gallerist who sometimes acts

Starting in 2012, his interest in contemporary art outweighed his ambition as an actor. He began working at the Marlborough Gallery in New York and stepped away from the mainstream spotlight of the commercial film industry.

In 2015 he appeared in the series Gotham playing Joe Pike. He took small roles in projects that let him keep his base of operations on the East Coast, because his life no longer revolved solely around scripts.

In 2023, he appeared in the series The Last of Us playing a member of the resistance in Kansas City.

That same year he joined the cast of the film The Kill Room alongside Uma Thurman and Samuel L. Jackson.

He is co-director of the art gallery Public Access on the Lower East Side.

His name appears in the production credits of several experimental short films funded with private capital.