Buddy Duress Dies: ‘Good Time’ & ‘Heaven Knows What’ Actor Was 38

Buddy Duress, an actor best known for starring opposite Robert Pattinson in the Safdie brothers 2017 film Good Time, has died. He was 38.

The actor’s brother, Christopher Stathis, confirmed the passing with People on Tuesday, February 27, revealing Duress died of “cardiac arrest from a drug cocktail” in November 2023.

Born in May 1985 in Queens, New York, Duress landed his first big-screen acting gig in Benny and Josh Safdie‘s 2014 psychological drama film Heaven Knows What, where he played low-level drug dealer Mike.

He would collaborate with the Safdie brothers again in their 2017 feature Good Time, which stars Pattinson as a small-time criminal who tries to free his developmentally disabled brother (Benny Safdie) from police custody while attempting to avoid his own arrest. Duress played Ray, a criminal recently released on parole.

Duress’ other credits include Person to Person (2017), The Mountain (2018), The Great Darkened Days (2018), PVT Chat (2021), Flinch (2021), and the 2022 black comedy Funny Pages, which was produced by the Safdie brothers. His final credit came in the horror movie Mass State Lottery, which is set to be released later this year.

On television, he briefly appeared on an episode of TruTV’s Rachel Dratch’s Late Night Snack.

Many of Duress’ on-screen roles reflected his own life, where he had a history of prison stints and drug problems. In a 2017 interview with SSense, Duress shared how he spent time at Rikers Island for drug charges and was on the run after skipping a drug in-patient program when he first met Josh Safdie in 2013.

Buddy Duress in ‘Good Time’; A24 /courtesy Everett Collection

After filming his part in Heaven Knows What, Duress was caught by police and returned to Rikers Island, where he remained when the movie premiered at the New York Film Festival in 2014, according to People.

“You know, I still look back at it. If I had went to that program, I wouldn’t have been in Heaven Knows What, and I probably wouldn’t be an actor right now. That’s the honest truth. I wouldn’t,” Duress told SSense.

As reported by the Los Angeles Times, the Safdie brothers told Duress to write a journal about his time in prison, which they later adapted into their script for Good Time.

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Duress was arrested again in 2019 on charges of grand larceny in the third degree and taken back to Rikers. That same year, while filming Flinch, he was arrested again for threatening to burn his mother’s house down.

According to the New York Post, Flinch director Cameron Van Hoy and Duress’ mother bailed him out of jail, but he was arrested and taken back to Rikers again on charges of menacing and criminal possession of brass knuckles and a controlled substance.

Speaking to People, Van Hoy said, “Buddy was pure electricity on screen. Working with him was one of the great adventures of my life. He was a kind person who loved making films. Despite any troubles he was going through in life, he somehow managed to put them aside when it came time to work. We grew quite close after the production of our film Flinch. I’m heartbroken that his life came to an end as it did.”