Duffy’s resilient spirit

last updated 8 January 2015

Patrick Duffy is unshakable, said Andrew Billen in The Times (U.K.). In 1986, the actor’s parents were murdered at their bar in Montana. But Duffy, a practicing Buddhist, never panicked—not even when he had to break the news to his children. “Immediately we told them what was going on,” says Duffy, who plays Bobby Ewing in TV’s Dallas. “I said, ‘Let’s chant for Grandma and Grandpa because right now they can’t chant for themselves.’” His sister, a retired police officer, didn’t share his faith or his attitude toward the killings. “She had been around death and murder, and she was devastated by the death of my parents. Me, I’d never been around anything that died, and I had completely the opposite reaction.” The siblings disagreed over how the killers, Sean Wentz and Kenneth Miller, should be dealt with. “My sister immediately was on a campaign, wanting punishment. My attitude is they’re already punished. They created the cause for the misery of their lives to come.” Miller was released on parole in 2007. “I’m okay with that,” says Duffy. “My sister’s not.” Is he immune to pain? “I’m invulnerable to suffering, [not] to pain. There’s a difference between pain and suffering. Suffering is self-inflicted.”