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He wants to remain as aloof as possible and any kind of celebrity or familiarity makes that increasingly less possible.
Which makes it seem all the more strange that he's suddenly being so candid about personal matters like love and relationships.
Candid for Patric, that is, which means he's talking in very general terms, careful not to name his current flame, supermodel Christy Turlington, or his more high-profile former girlfriends - like Julia Roberts before she was Mrs. Lyle Lovett or Robin Wright before she was Mrs. Sean Penn.
"We all want to be loved. If we can't find love in a relationship we try to find it in our work.
"No matter how many times you get burned or how many of your relationships go sour, no one's ever going to give up on relationships," says Patric.
"What we do abandon are our original expectations for a relationship so that we don't get hurt over and over again.
"Eventually our relationships are less fulfilling but they are also less painful. No matter how many of our relationships fail, we still treat each first date as if it will lead to at least a second or third."
He says that what he looks for in relationships is "honesty, patience and strength. For me, there also has to be the promise that there will be a change in both people. Without such a promise, there is little to look forward to in a relationship."
Patric and Turlington have been a couple since 1994. They met shortly after his much-publicized, year-long affair with Roberts ended.
It was in June of 1991 that Roberts ran off to Ireland with Patric only days after she called off her planned wedding with Kiefer Sutherland.
"I knew dating (Roberts) would be trouble. I just didn't know how much of an impact it would have on my privacy.
"Because I'm such a private person, what happened was the ultimate nightmare. I had worked for the first six years of my career to be as anonymous as possible and in the space of a few weeks I was one of the most public people in the world just because I was dating a famous person who liked to be in the press and who courted the press."
What has Patric musing about loves lost and won is his new movie, Your Friends and Neighbors, opening Friday.
It is a shocking emotional drama about six yuppies grappling with sex, sexuality, love and relationships.
Patric plays a gynecologist who has a deep-rooted fear of women that manifests itself in cruel, sociopathic behaviour towards his dates and his friends' wives and lovers.
Patric also produced this $5-million US movie from filmmaker Neil LeBute whose debut film In the Company of Men was last year's most controversial adult film.
"For years now, I've been looking for a brilliant young filmmaker I could help give voice to. I was like a young (Robert) De Niro searching for a (Martin) Scorsese."
Patric is adamant that this partnership would have been impossible had he not starred in last year's box-office dud, Speed 2: Cruise Control.
"I wanted to skim into the global marketplace so that I could make small movies like Your Friends and Neighbors.
"There was enough hype around Speed 2 that I was able to get the funding for Your Friends and Neighbors."
Though he has tried desperately to hide the fact, Patric is a third-generation actor.
His father is Jason Miller who starred as the priest in The Exorcist and wrote and directed the film That Championship Season.
His mother, actress Linda Miller, is the daughter of comedian Jackie Gleason.
"My grandfather was a very talented man but he was never part of my emotional life so I refuse to make him part of my professional life."
Patric's first movie was Mel Brooks' 1986 hunks-on-rollerblades disaster Solarbabies. He then played a sexy vampire in The Lost Boys and the young army captain in Geronimo.
"Each of those films ended up being a different movie than what I'd been led to believe we were making. It was then I made a conscious decision to seek out darker, more fulfilling projects."
These included After Dark My Sweet, Rush, The Beast, Frankenstein Unbound and The Journey of August King.
"I'm 32. When I look back on my career, I like that I was so brazen in my 20s. I only wish there had been more of those kinds of hard-edged scripts available to me."
It's the dark, shocking aspects of Your Friends & Neighbors and especially his character that have Patric so excited.
"I've portrayed dark characters in the past but no one this dark. The scary thing about this guy is that he can rationalize every unspeakable thing he says or does."
Patric admits he "knows lots of guys who routinely rationalize their misogyny."
Patric can see a positive side to such negative behaviour especially that of his callous character.
"He's so secure in himself that he's not afraid to reveal anything about himself. As a rule, guys don't talk to other people about their real feelings. That's what's makes the sauna scene in Your Friends & Neighbors so shocking."
He admits he had to search his own dark side to play such a manipulative, outspoken, egocentric man.
"At some level I understand him.
"I've been in relationships where I've wanted to strangle the person and I've been on freeways where I've wanted to shoot someone for cutting me off. That's the part of me I went to in my emotional research for this movie."