He is of Irish descent Patrick Duffy was born in Townsend, USA, and before his acting career he worked as a carpenter in New York and as a house painter in Los Angeles. That suddenly changed when he got the role of Bobby Ewing in the soap opera Dallas. In his first major television role at the end of the seventies, he was mostly seen in swimming trunks. In the sci-fi series The Man from Atlantis, he played the last survivor of the legendary island of Atlantis, who might breathe underwater. To this he realized that Duffy was a trained diver and was able to stay under water for more than three minutes on one breath. The series ran for 17 episodes, following which Duffy signed on for Dallas.
Patrick Duffy also returned for the 2012 sequel to Dallas. Source: Themoviedb.com
The name of the phenomenon: Dallas
Dallas is an American television series that follows the everyday life of the Ewing family, a Texas oil tycoon family, for 14 seasons. It originally ran from April 2, 1978 to May 3, 1991 in America. The series received numerous awards, Golden Globe and Emmy nominations. The series is still one of the most successful chapters of the American serial production, its 357 episodes have been translated into more than 60 languages and broadcast in 90 countries.
After a while, however, Duffy would have used the fame brought by the soap opera elsewhere, so at the end of the seventh season he himself asked for his character to be written out.
His death in episode 191 was completely unexpected and without context in the series, and caused such mass hysteria that at the beginning of the ninth season, Bobby returned as if nothing had happened. He was mourned and buried, but in episode 222 he suddenly comes back to life: his wife, Pamela, finds him coming out of the shower. According to the explanation given to the audience, the entire previous season was just his wife’s nightmare.
After that, he never left the series, he even returned as Bobby Ewing in its sequel completed between 2012 and 2014.
Tragedies overshadowing his private life
In 1974, Duffy married ballerina Carlyn Rosser, ten years his senior. Two sons were born from the marriage, both of whom were also in Dallas at the time. After the wedding day, Duffy never took off his wedding ring, even when he was playing a divorced man.
However, his private life was overshadowed by an unexpected tragedy in 1986. Duffy’s parents operated bars in the area. On November 18, 1986, two teenage robbers broke into one of their pubs and shot Duffy’s parents.
He lost his wife in 2017, which affected him so much that only half a year later he announced to the world that he was widowed. As he said, he mightn’t have imagined that love would find him once more, but in 2020 it happened: his current partner is actress Linda Purl.
The last time he came to the center of attention was when he visited Hungary last year for a Hungarian production. Duffy has accepted a role in the film Lepattanó, which is expected to be released in the second half of 2024.
Cover image: Dallas captivated millions of viewers (Photo: Themoviedb.com)
