Buddy Duress Cause of Death

Actor Buddy Duress, whose real name was Michael C. Stathis, has passed away at the age of 38. He was known for his roles in movies like Good Times and Heaven Knows What.

Duress died in November 2023 because of a heart problem caused by mixing drugs, confirmed his brother Christopher Stathis.

Director Jay Karales shared the sad news on X (which used to be called Twitter) on Friday, and The US Sun reported it on Monday.

He was born in Queens, New York, in May 1985. Duress acted in two films made by the Safdie Brothers. His first movie role was in Benny and Josh Safdie’s film Heaven Knows What in 2014.

In an interview with SSense in 2017, Duress said he met Josh in 2013 after getting out of Rikers Island jail in New York City for drug charges. He was running away from a drug treatment program at the time. Duress got to know Josh through a friend and got a part in Heaven Knows What. But later, police caught him, and he went back to Rikers Island after the movie was finished. He stayed in prison when the film premiered at the New York Film Festival in 2014.

Duress said to SSense, “You know, I still look back at it. If I had gone 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.”

After Duress was released from prison again, the filmmakers asked him to write about his time in jail. They used his stories to make the script for Good Time, according to the Los Angeles Times.

Three years after Heaven Knows What, he acted alongside Robert Pattinson in Good Time.

After his role in Good Time, Duress was in many more movies, including 86’d, The Mountain, and The Great Darkened Days. But in 2019, he was arrested again for stealing, reported the New York Post.

While filming Flinch the same year, Duress was arrested for threatening to burn his mother Jo-Anne’s house down. After being bailed out, he was arrested again for other charges and taken back to Rikers, according to the New York Post.

“Buddy was full of energy on screen. Working with him was one of the best parts of my life. He was a nice person who loved making movies. Even with the troubles in his life, he managed to focus on work. We became close after making our film Flinch. I’m very sad that his life ended this way,” said Flinch director Cameron Van Hoy to the media.

After Flinch came out in 2021, Duress was also in the short film Alone, the movie Funny Pages, and appeared in an episode of The New Rich Family Grudge.