Pat Mills (director)

Patrick "Pat" Mills is a Canadian film director, screenwriter and actor, whose feature film debut Guidance was released in 2015.

Early life and education

A former child actor who appeared on the television series You Can't Do That on Television, Mills later studied filmmaking at Ryerson University and studied at the Canadian Film Centre.

Career

Mills has directed several short films, including 5 Dysfunctional People in a Car, Marjorie, Pat's First Kiss, Babysitting Andy, The Affected Turtleneck Trio and I'm Not Martin!, and won the Toronto International Film Festival's annual Pitch This! competition for emerging film directors in 2008 for his pitch for Don't Talk to Irene.Don't Talk to Irene later won the award for Best Comedy Screenplay at the 2013 Austin Film Festival. He also has a teen drama television series, Amnesia Girl, in development.

Mills, who is gay, wrote Guidance as a satirical spin on his own history as a child actor, centring the screenplay on a character whose backstory is similar to his own but who has much more dysfunctional ways of dealing with his insecurities. Having not taken an acting role since 1994, he had to pay almost ten years worth of back ACTRA dues in order to act in his own film. His performance was nominated for a 2015 ACTRA Award.