Today is the day James Wan’s Insidious Chapter 2 hits theaters and we will all see Lambert family return to the big screen for more scares brought to you by “the Further”. If you’re like me, and you enjoy learning about the actors who bring characters to life, this article is for you.
So in celebration of the return of the Insidious franchise, I present to you the man who plays the patriarch of the Lambert family: Patrick Wilson.
I am a fan of Patrick Wilson and I hope I’m not the only one; he is a good actor and an even better singer. If for some illogical reason you don’t believe me, here’s proof of his singing talents: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9gMRrrFl2x8
I’m sure most of you recognize his face from movies like Insidious, The A-Team, and The Phantom of the Opera, but you didn’t know his name. Well, I am here to put a name to that face and that name is Patrick Joseph Wilson.
He was born on July 3, 1973 in Virginia and grew up in Florida. His mother, Mary K, is a voice teacher influenced Patrick to pursue singing. He earned a Bachelor of Fine Arts Degree for Drama from Carnegie Mellon University and continued to perform on stage and earned two consecutive Tony nominations for Best Actor in The Full Monty and Oklahoma!
His debut role as a film actor was in My Sister’s Wedding in 2001, followed by the role of Joe Pitt in the TV series Angels in America in 2003 (for which he received a Golden Globe nomination), and the role of William Travis in 2004’s The Alamo.
In his first major film, he landed the coveted role of Raoul in 2004’s The Phantom of the Opera, adapted from Andrew Lloyd Webber’s hit Broadway musical. As a person who has seen this movie enough times to turn it into my own personal sing-along, I can assure you that Patrick Wilson was superb in this movie. His acting was authentic and as you now know (if you watched the video above) his vocal talents are far beyond satisfactory. In addition to being the perfect Raoul, Wilson also performed most of his stunts for the movie, which involved riding a horse bareback, sword fighting, and underwater scenes.
In 2005, he married Marika Dominczyk. They have one son together, Kalin, who was born June 23, 2006.
From 2005 to 2008, Wilson starred in a variety of films such as Hard Candy, Running with Scissors, and Lakeview Terrace along with several other films, but he still wasn’t a household name.
In 2009, he starred as Nite Owl in the superhero film Watchmen. 2010 was a much bigger year for Wilson. He starred as the cocky special agent, Lynch, in Joe Carnahan’s The A-Team and Adam Bennett in Morning Glory. His star-making role that year however was in James Wan’s horror hit Insidious where he played a typical dad with sinister apparition baggage.
The only film Wilson starred in in 2011 was Young Adult where he played Charlize Theron’s former love interest. After that he took a break from film and starred in the TV series A Gifted Man, where he played a widowed surgeon whose dead wife taught him about the value of life from the here-after. He appeared in only one film in 2012 with a small role playing Shaw’s father in Ridley Scott’s sci-fi film, Prometheus.
We just saw Wilson in James Wan’s The Conjuring, which has been applauded as one of the scariest movies of 2013. We will see him next in the highly anticipated Insidious Chapter 2.
The gifted Patrick Wilson deserves your attention. I expect him to make it to the Oscars one day if he makes good choices in roles and continues to perform as well as he has in the past. Check out Insidious Chapter 2 which arrives in theaters September 13th.
Photo courtesy of:
Joella Marano [CC-BY-2.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0)], via Wikimedia Commons
Sources:
http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0933940/?ref_=sr_3
http://www.tribute.ca/people/patrick-wilson/11906/
http://movies.about.com/od/actorsbiographies/p/patwilson122204.htm