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Seminar From 1E
(Publishing, $9.95).

"I certainly haven't made a living in movie on looks," says Patrick, 41. "I don't have any great talent. But I've always been one who won't take 'no' for an answer, and I've always been the type person to ask questions so I can get to the bottom of something. I want to know the answers so I'll know how it works."

After working as an extra and seeing the movie business as something he might like to pursue, Patrick enrolled in a TV commercial workshop. "It must've worked because I started working in everything that came to Atlanta," he says "I did voice-overs on the radio. I was in a billboard ad for Ford. They had me sitting in a car, starting out the window, looking clueless, But I was making money."

He read for a major part in coward of the County but didn't get it, "But the producer, Dick Lowry, said 'You're not bad, I'm gonna find you something to do.' So he gave me the part of a soldier who had just come back from boot camp. Dick said, 'You don't mind getting a little haircut, do you?" I said no. Well, they brought out these clippers and shaved my head. I guess that impressed him that willing to do that."

Patrick worked 28 days on coward of the county " commuting 140 miles a day and working as a stand-in, working as a stunt man, getting Dick Lowery and Kenny Rogers lunch...whatever they wanted me to do."

At the end of filming, Lowry invited Patrick to Hollywood to work on another movie. "I loaded my suitcase and TV into my '66 Mustang, figuring I'd be gone about three weeks, " he says. "I stayed 15 years."

His first month in Hollywood, Patrick worked 21 days as an actor.

"I found out about a thing in L.A. called the Breakdown Service, "he says, "It's service that breaks down all the TV and movie scripts and sends them to casting directors. I found out through another actor that the Breakdown were delivered to the door of these different agents, so I found where this one agent lived I'd take a broomstick and, through the fence, rake the breakdowns over to me, run make copies, bring them back, then go home and go through all the parts. I had a friend in Atlanta who would pose my agent and make calls from me. that's how got a lot of my work."

one of the breakdown called for a guest spot on an episode of MASH.

"I went in and read for the part, and the casting directors told me to my face, 'You can't act. you've got some work to do,' " Patrick recalls, "So I fed her a line about how I was gonna go to acting school.

"A month later, she calls me back in to read for the part again when I get there, I am in this waiting area and I know almost every person in there because I've seen them on TV - the guy who played Emie on My three sons was one of them. They're all there to read for the same part. I am after, So I know I've got about as much chance landing this part as I do of flying.

"Somehow, I got the part. It was the episode where two men get blown up, one gets killed and comes back as a ghost. It was nominated for an Emmy."

Patrick has turned more to writing the past two years. Movie rights to his first novel, White Trash in a Trailer Park, have been purchased by HBO.

Some of the topics he will discuss at the seminar are how to write a resume, submitting the right type headshots, finding an agent, what to expect at an audition, what to look at when considering acting classes, how to get your child into show business.

"I don't have all the answers," he says, "but I can tell you what I've learned over the past 15 years. the main thing people need to know is that I was just like all these extras working in A Time to Kill. I knew It was something I wanted to Pursue, but I have no idea how to go about it. Hopefully, I can lead some of those people in the right direction."