Born Jason Patric Miller in Queens, he is the middle child of actor-playwright Jason Miller and actress Linda G Miller (whose father was comic legend Jackie Gleason). After his parents' divorce, he and his siblings were raised in NYC and Bergen County, NJ. At age 16, Patric moved to California and with his younger brother Jordan earned credit as production assistants on the film version of Jason Miller's award-winning play "That Championship Season" (1982). Opting for an acting career, he dropped his surname and landed his first role as the troubled son of Bruce Dern and Lee Remick in the ABC movie "Toughlove" (1985).

Over the course of his career, Patric has been quite selective in his roles, generally down-playing his good looks and unconcerned over both box-office appeal and career effect. He debuted as a roller-skating hunk in the unsuccessful sci-fi flick "Solarbabies" (1986) but scored with his sophomore effort as a disaffected teen drawn into a cult of vampires in "The Lost Boys" (1987). The underrated "The Beast" (1988) afforded him the unusual role of a pacifist Russian soldier in Afghanistan who eventually joins the Afghan rebels. Patric's back-to-back turns as a punch-drunk boxer caught up in a kidnapping scheme in "After Dark, My Sweet" and a heroin-addicted narcotics cop in "Rush" firmly established his credentials as an intense and serious actor. For this intensely private player, the 1991 tabloid frenzy sparked by his romantic involvement with Julia Roberts on the heels of her well-publicized break-up with Kiefer Sutherland was undoubtedly painful. Patric seemingly retreated from view until 1993 when he co-starred in "Geronimo: An American Legend" playing an officer escorting the title character to a meeting with a US general. After another period drama, "The Journey of August King" (1995), in which he played a widower who helps a runaway slave, Patric returned to contemporary times, offering one of his best screen performances as a misogynistic bachelor in Neil LaBute's black comedy "Your Friends and Neighbors" (1998).