AS super-wealthy Bobby Ewing of “Dallas” fame, you’d figure Patrick Duffy would feel right at home wearing pricey, hand-tooled cowboy boots.
But the handsome 65-year-old actor was spotted sporting leather clogs while strolling in Los Angeles on April 9, and The ENQUIRER has learned that his surprising choice of footwear is due to a longtime foot problem.
It ALL stems from Duffy’s first major TV role in 1976.
In the “Man from Atlantis,” he starred as half-man/ half – fish Mark Harris and spent so much time running around barefoot with artificially webbed toes that he developed an agonizing medical condition called Morton’s neuroma. The ailment affects a nerve leading to the toes, causing a sharp burning pain in the ball of the foot. In 1989, he had surgery to remove the affected nerve, but his dogs still bother him.
“I have terrible feet,” Duffy revealed. “I really beat them up during ‘Man from Atlantis,’ because I was barefoot all the time – running through fields, running on cement, jumping out of the water, slapping them around for years. So the nerves on the bottom kind of went all to hell. Since then, I’ve chosen to wear clogs.”
Duffy, who starred in the top-rated “Dallas” nighttime soap from 1978 to 1991, is still going strong as Bobby Ewing in the current TNT sequel. And he’s got some stellar company when it comes to Morton’s neuroma sufferers, who include Aerosmith’s Steven Tyler, former top female tennis star Lindsay Davenport and Tampa Bay Rays third baseman Evan Longoria.
Despite his agony of “de-feet,” Duffy is a longtime practicing Buddhist and has clearly found peace of mind. He celebrated his 40th wedding anniversary earlier this year with wife Carlyn, a former ballerina. And he has put together the pieces of his life following the 1986 murder of his parents, Marie and Terence Duffy, during a robbery of their Boulder, Mont., tavern.