The Pitt star, Patrick Ball, became emotional as he opened up about how the series saved him from a real-life crisis.
The 36-year-old actor booked his breakout role in the award-winning HBO drama in early 2025. But before he began playing the part of Dr. Frank Langdon, Ball was drowning in student debt, as he revealed in an interview with Cultured Magazine.
“I paid off my student loans like three months into The Pitt, and that was a really profound moment ‘cause I thought I was gonna die with it,” the actor told Cultured, beginning to cry.
He shared that he owed $80,000 in debt.
“It’s a huge burden to carry,” he said. “I had been through a series of failed relationships where my financial insecurity was a real problem,” he continued candidly. “I had just thought that was going to be my life forever, and that is a really heavy thing to live with. Paying off those student loans and getting back to zero, I remember being like, ‘Man, if this show works, great. If it doesn’t work, they can’t take that away from me. I am out of debt.’ No take-backsies on that.”
The actor shed light on the reality of trying to get work as an aspiring actor: “Working as an actor, you don’t know what’s coming, have no money—the financial outlook can be bleak."
Ball received a Certificate in Drama from the David Geffen School of Drama at Yale University.
Before finding the spotlight via The Pitt, Ball did theater and also worked a series of other jobs in New York. “I was working at a coffee shop, I was working at a restaurant, I was working as a wardrobe assistant for And Just Like That…,” he said. “I was doing these corporate coaching seminars.”
Ball said when the call for The Pitt arrived, “everything was different.”
