From Cheap Thrills To Captain America, Pat Healy O

From Cheap Thrills To Captain America, Pat Healy On The Costs (And Rewards) Of Acting

In the new movie Cheap Thrills, a laid-off mechanic finds himself competing with an old friend at the behest of a bored rich couple to perform an escalating series of dares, for more and more money. Although it’s mostly an intimate story of one father and husband’s desperation, it doubles as a powerful metaphor for the current perception of financial opportunities for low-income workers, not to mention an indictment of class warfare. And according to star Pat Healy, who plays Craig, the desperate wage-earner at the heart of the story, it makes for an indelicate but not inaccurate representation of the opportunities and challenges presented to actors in Hollywood.

“I mean, the less pleasant things are made easier with money,” Healy explained recently about the trade-offs he’s faced during his time in Tinseltown. “But I always have this thing where it’s like, all right, you can eat shit financially, you can eat shit creatively, or you can eat shit personally.”

Using his new film as an example, he said, “You eat shit financially to do Cheap Thrills, like maybe you didn’t make any money doing this movie, but you don’t eat shit creatively because you get to do all these amazing things, and you don’t eat shit personally because you like all the people that you’re working with.” In other instances, he admitted, he’s not always been so lucky, even when the rewards initially seemed to exceed the challenges.

“But I’ve taken jobs where you get the offer, it’s really exciting, it’s a good thing that you want to sink your teeth into,” Healy said. “You like the people that you’re working for and the money looks good. But the person becomes intolerable. The work that they asked you to do becomes completely compromised. And the amount of time that you end up putting into it is so great that the money is not even good.”

Healy began his career in the late 1990s, and quickly graduated from bit parts to meatier roles in films like Paul Thomas Anderson’s Magnolia, and Terry Zwigoff’s Ghost World. He said that he established his value system early on to ensure that he was sufficiently rewarded for each new experience, regardless whether or not that reward was financial. “If I could get one of those three things, I’m okay,” he admitted. “If I had a good time, if I had a good creative experience, which means I brought something to it and I took something away from it, I grew from in some way, or I made a lot of money.”

After more than a decade and a half in the industry, Healy observed that he seldom feels like the opportunities for which he’s paid the most money afford him equivalent creative ones. “Unfortunately, what makes a lot of money and what pays a lot of money now is a lot of garbage,” he said. “I don’t think that’s anything new. I think that there’s probably just as many good and bad things now as there ever was, but that stuff – just like the disparity between the wealthy and the poor in this country, the disparity between what makes a lot of money and what makes very little or nothing has never been greater.”

“There are movies that make billions or hundreds of millions of dollars and there are wonderful movies that don’t make their money back,” he continued. “If I were to work on one of those movies now in a small supporting role I’m likely to get the scale.” That said, he indicated that his recent turn in the upcoming Captain America sequel, The Winter Soldier, offered a comparatively rare instance of good money and good work, in something he was proud to be associated with.

“Somebody asked me to do a day on the Captain America movie, and I know that’s going to be a good movie,” he said. “I didn’t have a lot to do creatively on it, but I had fun, I made money, people are going to see it, and I got to work with Robert Redford.”

Healy, who drew positive reviews for his complex, engaging performances in such recent films as Great World of Sound, The Innkeepers and Compliance, confessed that he can’t always devote the same amount of work – out of necessity rather than design – for every role he earns. “Sometimes you don’t have to do what I did for Cheap Thrills,” he admitted. “But in most cases I would like to apply the same commitment and dedication to doing the work. You sometimes aren’t able to, mostly because you don’t have enough time to really get into it. You get hired and you got to go to work the next day,” he revealed.

“But whenever possible, I don’t care if I think it’s junk or not, I still try my hardest,” he insisted. “Because to me it’s the quality of work – and my job. Not just my reputation, but they’re paying me an awful lot of money and I can always learn something from something, even if it’s just having time in front of the camera to learn how to get better at what I do.”

Cheap Thrills is currently playing on VOD, and opens nationwide Friday in limited release.

#extra: Forbes.com