Bill Paxton

William Paxton (May 17, 1955 – February 25, 2017) was an American actor, filmmaker and musician. A versatile character actor known for his distinctive Texan drawl and everyman screen persona, he was a four-time Golden Globe Award and a Primetime Emmy Award nominee, among other accolades.

Paxton starred in films Near Dark (1987), Tombstone (1993), Apollo 13 (1995), Twister (1996), Mighty Joe Young (1998), A Simple Plan (1998), U-571 (2000), Vertical Limit (2000) and played supporting roles in Weird Science (1985), Predator 2 (1990), Edge of Tomorrow (2014), and Nightcrawler (2014). He was a close collaborator of director James Cameron, appearing in his films The Terminator (1984), Aliens (1986), True Lies (1994), and Titanic (1997). He made his directorial debut with the 2001 horror film Frailty, in which he also starred, earning him Saturn Award nominations for Best Director and Best Horror Film.

On television, Paxton starred as Bill Henrickson on the HBO drama series Big Love (2006–2011), for which he earned three Golden Globe nominations for Best Actor – Television Series Drama during the show's run. He was nominated for an Emmy Award and a Screen Actors Guild Award for portraying Randall McCoy in the History Channel miniseries Hatfields & McCoys (2012).

William Paxton was born in Fort Worth, Texas, on May 17, 1955, the son of Mary Lou (née Gray; 1926–2016) and John Lane Paxton (1920–2011). His mother was a Catholic who raised him and his siblings in her faith. His father was a businessman, lumber wholesaler, museum executive, and (during his son's career) an occasional actor, notably appearing in Sam Raimi's Spider-Man films as Bernard Houseman and alongside Paxton in A Simple Plan (1998). His great-great-grandfather was Elisha Franklin Paxton (1828–1863), a brigadier general in the Confederate Army during the Civil War who was killed commanding the Stonewall Brigade at the Battle of Chancellorsville.

Paxton is distantly related to actress Sara Paxton and was the great-nephew of Mary Paxton Keeley, a prominent journalist and close friend of Bess Truman. At the age of eight, he was in the crowd when President John F. Kennedy emerged from the Hotel Texas in Fort Worth on the morning of his assassination on November 22, 1963. Photographs of Paxton being lifted above the crowd are on display at the Sixth Floor Museum at Dealey Plaza in Dallas, Texas. He later co-produced the film Parkland about the assassination. He graduated from Arlington Heights High School in Fort Worth in 1973, after which he studied at Richmond College in London, alongside his old high-school friend Danny Martin. There, they met fellow Texas native Tom Huckabee, with whom they made Super 8 short films for which they built their own sets. One of Paxton's first lead roles was in Huckabee's experimental film Taking Tiger Mountain. Paxton subsequently moved to Los Angeles, where he worked in props and art departments and as a parking valet at the Beverly Hills Hotel. After being rejected by film schools in Southern California, he switched his ambitions from directing to acting.

Among Paxton's earliest roles were as a mortuary assistant in Mortuary (1983), a minor role as a punk in The Terminator (1984), a minor role as a bartender in Streets of Fire, a supporting role as the lead protagonist's bullying older brother Chet Donnelly in John Hughes's Weird Science (1985), and Private William Hudson in Aliens (1986).

He directed several short films, including the music video for Barnes & Barnes's novelty song "Fish Heads", which aired during Saturday Night Live's low-rated 1980–81 season and was in heavy rotation during the early days of Canadian music channel MuchMusic. He was cast in a music video for the 1982 Pat Benatar song "Shadows of the Night" in which he appeared as a Nazi radio officer.

In 1981, Paxton played a soldier in the movie Stripes in the bar scene with John Candy and Bill Murray.

He worked alongside Arnold Schwarzenegger in The Terminator (1984) and in Commando (1985), as well as in True Lies (1994), which reunited him with James Cameron. He reunited with Cameron on Aliens (1986). His performance in the latter film as Private Hudson earned him the Saturn Award for Best Supporting Actor.

He also appeared in Weird Science (1985). In 1987, Paxton played the most psychotic of the vampires, Severen, in Kathryn Bigelow's critically acclaimed neo-Western horror film Near Dark.

In 1982, Paxton and his friend Andrew Todd Rosenthal formed a new wave musical band called Martini Ranch. The band released its only full-length album, Holy Cow, in 1988 on Sire Records. The album was produced by Devo member Bob Casale, and featured guest appearances by two other members of that band. The music video for the band's single "Reach" was directed by James Cameron. In 2018, his performances as Peter "Coconut Pete" Wabash in Broken Lizard's Club Dread were released posthumously on the album Take Another Hit: The Best of Coconut Pete.

Paxton married Kelly Rowan in 1979 and they divorced a year later. He met Louise Newbury on a bus in Twickenham, London, where she was a student. They were married in 1987. They lived in Ojai, California, and had two children, including James, who also became an actor.

Filmmakers and actors paid tribute to Paxton after his death. On February 26, 2017, while introducing the annual In Memoriam segment at the 89th Academy Awards the day after Paxton's death, a visibly emotional Jennifer Aniston paid tribute to him. His Big Love co-star Chloë Sevigny remembered him as "one of the less cynical, jaded people [she'd] ever met in the business" and said, "He believed in entertainment being transportive and transformative. He believed in the magic of what we can bring to people. That was really a gift that he gave to me." The television show Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. paid tribute at the end of its season-four episode "What If...", and a number of storm chasers paid tribute to his role in Twister by spelling out his initials "BP" via the Spotter Network.

The 2017 film Call Me by Your Name was dedicated to Paxton's memory. The film's producer, Peter Spears, explained that his husband Brian Swardstrom, who was also Paxton's best friend and agent, once visited the set with Paxton during filming and befriended the film's director Luca Guadagnino, who ultimately decided to dedicate the film "in loving memory of Bill Paxton". Close friend and frequent collaborator James Cameron wrote a tribute in an article for Vanity Fair, detailing their 36-year friendship and expressing regret over the projects they would not be able to make together. The 2019 John Travolta film The Fanatic, which co-starred Paxton's son James, was dedicated to Paxton. James would later play a younger version of Paxton's S.H.I.E.L.D. character in the final season of Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D., which served as a tribute to his role in the show. Cameron's 2022 film, Avatar: The Way of Water was dedicated to the memory of Paxton as well as to James Horner, who previously worked with Cameron on Aliens, Titanic and the first Avatar. Paxton worked with both Cameron and Horner on the former two films. Cameron had hoped to cast Paxton in the Avatar sequels before his death.