Background and career
James Patrick Stuart (born June 16, 1968) is an American actor. He portrays Valentin Cassadine on the daytime soap opera General Hospital, for which he received three consecutive Daytime Emmy Award nominations for Outstanding Supporting Actor in a Drama Series in 2020, 2021 and 2022.
Stuart was born in California to English parents Chad and Jill Gibson Stuart. His songwriter father was one-half of the 1960s British Invasion duo Chad & Jeremy; because of this, Stuart spent much of his childhood in recording studios. As a wannabe child actor, he talked his parents into taking him to nighttime tapings of sitcoms such as Happy Days and Mork and Mindy. Acting under the name Patrick Stuart, he was spotted by a talent agent in a local production of A Christmas Carol and landed the role of Dr. Zee in the short-lived TV series Galactica 1980. His parents moved to Laguna Beach, California, where he went to high school. He spent two years in San Francisco State University's drama department before dropping out in 1988 to move back to Hollywood, where he studied at Stella Adler's acting school under Arthur Mendoza and Joanne Linville.
In 1989, Stuart was cast in the soap opera All My Children as Will Cortlandt and was nominated for a Daytime Emmy Award for Outstanding Younger Actor in 1992. In 1990 he made a brief appearance in the film Pretty Woman as a bellhop. He played Confederate Colonel Edward Porter Alexander in the 1993 film Gettysburg and its 2003 prequel Gods and Generals. In 2009 he was Meryl Streep's would-be plastic surgeon in It's Complicated. He is known mostly for his work on television, appearing in such shows as Galactica 1980, CSI, Andy Richter Controls the Universe, The Closer, 90210, Still Standing, Reba, Supernatural, Hot in Cleveland, and 2 Broke Girls. In a 1996 episode of Seinfeld, he played Elaine's furniture-designing, "Desperado"-loving boyfriend, Brett. In "The Ski Lodge," a 1998 episode of Frasier, he played Guy, the gay French ski instructor. He provides the voices of Avalanche in Wolverine and the X-Men, Private the Penguin (replacing Christopher Knights) and Joey the Kangaroo in Nickelodeon's The Penguins of Madagascar, Pvt. MacGregor in Call of Duty 2 and Xigbar in the Kingdom Hearts video games. Since July 2016 he has played the role of villain Valentin Cassadine on General Hospital. He starred in the Disney Channel sitcom The Villains of Valley View, from 2022 thru 2023, as the mad scientist Kraniac.
Stuart resides in Los Angeles, California, with his wife Jocelyn and their two sons. His parents were divorced and his father, who died in December 2020, had two subsequent marriages. He has a brother, Andrew, and a half-brother, Beau, as well as several step-brothers and step-sisters.
Sources
Net-worth figure: Celebrity Net Worth (October 2026), in USD. Biography and career facts: the person's Wikipedia article and linked reporting. Snapshot date for all StarWorth figures: 28 October 2026.
