Buddy Duress has passed away at the age of 38.
The actor, known for roles in Good Time and Heaven Knows, has passed away.
Duress–who previously co-starred alongside Twilight star Robert Pattinson–died in November 2023 due to a “cardiac arrest from a drug cocktail.”
His brother, Christopher Stathis, confirmed the news to PEOPLE in February 2024.
Duress made his acting debut in Josh and Benny Safdie’s 2014 film Heaven Knows What…
He landed that role shortly after being released from Rikers Island for a drug-related conviction.Â
The actor is survived by his mother, Jo-Anne, and younger brother, Christopher.Â
Buddy had a long history of legal troubles, having been in jail at least 10 times throughout his life.
The late actor’s charges included identity theft, grand larceny, and heroin possession.Â
Buddy was born Michael C. Stathis in Queens, New York in May 1985.
After his 2014 movie debut, he went on to team up with the Safdie brothers again in the 2017 movie Good Time, where he played a drug dealer who teams up with Pattinson’s character.Â
Throughout his career, he also appeared in several other films, including Person to Person, Funny Pages, Flinch, Beware of Dog, and The Mountain.
According to his IMDb page, he has two more projects scheduled to be released later this year: Skull and Mass State Lottery.
Sadly, Buddy’s time in jail got in the way of his career…
In 2019 The New York Post reported that comedian Pete Davidson was such a fan of the actor, he inquired about him auditioning for his Untitled Judd Apatow – Pete Davidson Comedy.
He was reportedly unable to audition, however, because he was at Rikers Island.
During a 2017 interview with SSense, Duress revealed that he met Josh Safdie through a mutual friend in 2013 after he was released from Rikers.
At the time, he was on the run after he skipped out on a drug in-patient program.
Though he got the role in Heaven Knows What, he was later caught by police and taken back to Rikers Island after the movie was finished.
He was still in prison when the film premiered at the New York Film Festival in 2014.
“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,” he told SSense. “That’s the honest truth. I wouldn’t.”
After he was released, the filmmakers asked him to write a journal about his time in prison…
They later adapted that into their script for Good Time, according to the Los Angeles Times.Â
In 2019, he was arrested on charges of grand larceny in the third degree and went back to Rikers.
Buddy was also arrested for threatening to burn his mother Jo-Anne’s house down that same year, while filming crime drama Flinch.
Despite his legal issues while filming the movie, its director, Cameron Van Hoy, had nothing but praise for the star.
“Buddy was pure electricity on screen,” he told PEOPLE. “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.”
His Mass State Lottery director, Jay Karales, called him “a once in a lifetime charismatic actor and a genuinely humble man that left an impression on everyone he met” in a statement to PEOPLE.
He called his death a “tragic and frustrating loss of visceral talent”
Karales continued, “He lived like a cowboy and carrying the weight of that kind of life informed his skills and performances in a way that made him irreplaceable as an actor.”