Patrick Wilson

Patrick Wilson (birthname: Patrick Joseph Wilson) has an interesting two-sided career as an actor—initially as a stage and Broadway actor, specializing in musicals, while on the big screen, Wilson is best known to audiences as Josh Lambert in the ongoing hit horror franchise, Insidious, which launched in 2010.

Putting aside his role in the still-unreleased movie, My Sister’s Wedding (filmed in 2001), Wilson was primarily a stage actor from 1995 to 2004, when he had his first actual movie debut in the commercially disastrous remake of The Alamo (2004), under co-writer John Lee Hancock’s direction, co-starring Dennis Quaid, Billy Bob Thornton, Jason Patric, Jordi Molla, and Emilio Echevarria.

More impactful was Wilson’s performance in the much-awaited film version of Andrew Lloyd Webber’s The Phantom of the Opera (2004), directed and co-written (with Webber) by Joel Schumacher, starring Gerard Butler, Emmy Rossum, Miranda Richardson, and Minnie Driver, and grossing a good $154 million on a $80 million budget. Patrick Wilson’s first starring role was in the successful thriller ($8 million gross on a $1 million budget), Hard Candy (2005), with Elliot Page and Sandra Oh, and premiering at Sundance Film Festival.

Wilson received his most acclaim yet (including a best actor Satellite Awards nomination) for his co-starring performance in Todd Field’s second feature, Little Children (2006), based on Tom Perrota’s novel and co-starring Kate Winslet, Jennifer Connelly, Jackie Earle Haley, Noah Emmerich, Gregg Edelman, and Phyllis Somerville, earning three Oscar nominations for Field and Perrotta (adapted script), Winslet and Haley. Wilson joined filmmaker Ryan Murphy for his screen adaptation of Augusten Burroughs’ best-selling memoir, Running with Scissors (2006), with Joseph Cross, Annette Bening, Brian Cox, Joseph Fiennes, Evan Rachel Wood, Alec Baldwin, Jill Clayburgh, and Gwyneth Paltrow.

Patrick Wilson, having established himself as a distinguished stage and screen actor, was cast with an equally distinguished cast (Claire Danes, Toni Collette, Meryl Streep, Glenn Close, Vanessa Redgrave, Hugh Dancy, Natasha Richardson, Mamie Gummer, and Eileen Atkins) in the drama, Evening (2007), co-written by Susan Minot and Michael Cunningham (based on Minot’s 1998) novel and directed by Lajos Koltai, and proving to be a commercial and critical failure.

Although it premiered at the Tribeca Film Festival in 2008, Wilson’s next movie in the lead role—writer-director Tracey Hecht’s comedy-drama, Life in Flight, with Amy Smart, Lynn Collins, and Rashida Jones, wasn’t released until 2011 by IFC Films to modest results. Wilson co-starred with Samuel L. Jackson and Kerry Washington in one of director Neil LaBute’s few movies which he didn’t also write, the crime thriller Lakeview Terrace (2008), earning a solid $48 million globally for Screen Gems/Sony. Wilson’s next movie for Sony (via division TriStar) was far less successful—the Rodrigo Garcia-directed mystery, Passengers (2008), in which Wilson co-starred with Anne Hathaway, David Morse, Andre Braugher, Clea DuVall, and Dianne Wiest.

Patrick Wilson then joined the sprawling cast of director Zack Snyder’s anticipated though somewhat poorly-received $150-million version (via DC Comics and illustrator Dave Gibbons) of the (uncredited) Alan Moore superhero epic, Watchmen (2009), with Malin Åkerman, Billy Crudup, Matthew Goode, Carla Gugino, Jackie Earle Haley, Jeffrey Dean Morgan. Wilson starred in the title role of writer-director Chris D’Arienzo’s comedy, Barry Munday (2010), with Judy Greer, Chloë Sevigny, Jean Smart, Cybill Shepherd, Billy Dee Williams, and Malcolm McDowell, which premiered at the South by Southwest film festival.

Patrick Wilson joined the ensemble of Liam Neeson, Bradley Cooper, Jessica Biel, Quinton Jackson, and Sharlto Copley for the commercially disappointing big-screen version of the hit TV show, The A-Team (2010), directed and co-written by Joe Carnahan and co-producedby series creator Stephen J. Cannell and Tony Scott for 20^th Century Fox. Wilson was then a co-star in a solid-performing comedy for the final Miramax/Disney production and release, The Switch (2010), starring Jennifer Aniston, Jason Bateman, Jeff Goldblum, and Juliette Lewis. Patrick Wilson enjoyed a career breakthrough as co-star of the James Wan-directed, Jason Blum-produced horror blockbuster, Insidious (2010), with Rose Byrne and Barbara Hershey, grossing $100 million on a $1.5 million budget.

This mega-hit spawned two sequels: Insidious: Chapter 2 (2013), with Wan again directing the original cast; and Insidious: The Red Door (2023), with Wilson taking over as director for his (well-reviewed) directorial debut, with new cast member Hiam Abbass. Wilson was then cast opposite Rachel McAdams, Harrison Ford, Diane Keaton, and Goldblum in the Roger Michell-directed comedy for Paramount, Morning Glory (2010), followed by Wilson starring in director-writer-producer Matthew Chapman’s little-seen thriller, The Ledge (2011), with Terrence Howard, Liv Tyler, and Charlie Hunnam, and premiering at Sundance.

Wilson co-starred opposite Charlize Theron, Patton Oswalt, and Elizabeth Reaser in the Jason Reitman/Diablo Cody comedy-drama, Young Adult (2011), earning $23 million globally. Wilson then reunited with Theron for the very different Ridley Scott sci-fi epic and Alien (1979) prequel, Prometheus (2012), with Noomi Rapace, Michael Fassbender, Guy Pearce, and Idris Elba, grossing $403 million on a $130 million budget. Patrick Wilson had his second, even more, successful horror franchise with director James Wan as co-star of The Conjuring (2013), with Vera Farmiga, Ron Livingston, and Lili Taylor, and grossing a knockout $319.5 million global gross on a $20 million budget.

Wilson returned in several succeeding sequels in The Conjuring Universe movies, starting with The Conjuring 2 (2016), with new cast members Frances O’Connor and Franka Potente, and grossing $322 million; Wilson returned as Ed Warren in Annabelle Comes Home (2019), the sequel to Annabelle (2014) and Annabelle: Creation (2017) and seventh entry in The Conjuring Universe, and grossing a strong $231 million; Wilson continued as Ed in the Michael Chaves-directed sequel, The Conjuring: The Devil Made Me Do It (2021), with new cast member Ruari O’Connor, and once again proving a hit for Warner Bros. with a $206.4 million return.

Patrick Wilson starred in his first European-based production in Polish writer-director Wladyslaw Pasikowski’s political thriller, Jack Strong (2014), with Maja Ostaszewska, Marcin Dorocinski, and Dagmara Dominczyk, and released in the U.S. in 2015. Wilson co-starred with Liv Tyler and Matt Bomer in the sci-fi parody, Space Station 76 (2014), directed and co-written by Jack Plotnick and premiered at the South by Southwest festival. For writer-director (and novelist creator) Adriana Trigiani, Wilson co-starred opposite Ashley Judd in Big Stone Gap (2014), with Whoopi Goldberg, John Benjamin Hickey, Jane Krakowski, Anthony LaPaglia, and Jenna Elfman.

Wilson had his debut as producer and star in the critically-lambasted black comedy, Let’s Kill Ward’s Wife (2014), from co-star/director/writer/producer Scott Foley, with Donald Faison and Dominczyk, and released by Tribeca Film. Wilson starred in the Sundance-premiering political thriller, Zipper (2015), directed and co-written by Mora Stephens, with Lena Headey, John Cho, Ray Winstone, and Richard Dreyfuss, and then Wilson co-starred with Katherine Heigl, Jordana Brewster and Jim Belushi in director-producer Anthony Burns’ black comedy, Home Sweet Hell (2015).

Patrick Wilson co-starred with Kurt Russell in writer-director S. Craig Zahler’s brilliant, intensely violent cannibal western, Bone Tomahawk (2015), with Matthew Fox, Lili Simmons, Richard Jenkins, Evan Jongkeit, Kathryn Morris, Sid Haig, and David Arquette, and which premiered at the Fantastic film festival before becoming a new cult classic. Wilson co-starred opposite Jessica Biel, Haley Bennett, Vincent Kartheiser, and Eddie Marsan in an adaptation of Patricia Highsmith’s 1954 novel, The Blunderer, titled A Kind of Murder (2016), released by Magnolia Pictures after a Tribeca film festival premiere.

Wilson’s next movie combined Western and crime fiction—The Hollow Point (2016), directed and edited by Spanish filmmaker Gonzalo López-Gallego, and with Lynn Collins, Ian McShane, John Leguizamo, and Jim Belushi. Wilson reunited with director John Lee Hancock for a supporting role in the biopic about McDonald’s founder, Ray Kroc, The Founder (2016), starring Michael Keaton, Nick Offerman, John Carroll Lynch, Linda Cardellini, and Laura Dern, which Wilson followed with another supporting role in the Liam Neeson-starring thriller, The Commuter (2018), with Vera Farmiga, Jonathan Banks, and Sam Neill, and released worldwide by both StudioCanal and Lionsgate.

Wilson returned to the horror genre in a segment directed by David Slade for the Fantasia festival-premiering anthology movie, Nightmare Cinema (2018), with other segments directed by Joe Dante, Ryuhei Kitamura, Alejandro Brugues, and Mick Garris. Patrick Wilson’s third role in a studio (Warner Bros.) franchise was as King Orm/Ocean Master in both Aquaman (2018) and Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom (2023), both directed by Wilson’s Insidious and Conjuring director-producer, James Wan.

Wilson co-starred in one of the most expensive independent film productions in history, as Lt. Cmdr. Edwin Layton, in producer-director Roland Emmerich’s $100-million WW2 epic, Midway (2019), with Dennis Quaid, Woody Harrelson, Ed Skrein, Luke Evans, Aaron Eckhart, Nick Jonas, Etsushi Tokokawa, Tadanobu Asano, Jun Kunimura, Mandy Moore, but grossing only $127 million worldwide.

Wilson reunited with Emmerich for—unfortunately—another costly box-office bomb with the $146-million sci-fi drama, Moonfall (2022), starring Halle Berry, John Bradley, Michael Peña, Charlie Plummer, Kelly Yu, and Donald Sutherland. Patrick Wilson starred in the John Krokidas-directed drama, Tunnels (date to be announced), with Susan Sarandon, Anna Faris, Alicia Silverstone, and Jaeden Martell.