The Bill Paxton Page
Born and raised in Fort Worth, Texas, Paxton discovered his
acting aspirations during high school, when he and several friends made
their own movies using hand-held cameras and Super 8 film. Not
content to settle for small-time special effects, the young filmmakers
borrowed guns to shoot holes in cars for one realistic action sequence,
and Paxton went so far as to set his arm on fire for another. His parents
encouraged this sort of adventurous behavior, and they supported
Paxton's decision, at the age of eighteen, to move to Los Angeles after
he had been promised a few weeks of work on an educational film.
Three weeks turned into three years, and when he wasn't hanging
around movie sets, he paid the bills by parking cars at the Beverly Hills
Hotel. He earned his first break at Roger Corman's New World
Pictures, where he worked as a set dresser and eventually won a small
role in Crazy Mama (1975). Convinced that he would get more work
with the benefit of a few acting lessons, Paxton relocated to the East
Coast to study acting under famed drama coach Stella Adler, at New
York University.
When he returned to the West Coast, Paxton's career began to
take shape, with eleven appearances on the silver screen between 1981
and 1986. Following a string of bit parts in critically lauded films (The
Lords of Discipline, Streets of Fire, The Terminator), he landed
major supporting roles in back-to-back movies playing soldier-types: in
Weird Science, he appeared as the sadistic, paramilitary brother of the
nerdy protagonist; in Aliens, he portrayed a rowdy, gun-toting space
marine. You'd think he would have had plenty to do making movies, but
during this same period, Paxton wrote, directed, and produced two
award-winning short films, and cut an album as half of the rock group
Martini Ranch. All that, and he still found time to woo and marry Louise
Newbury, whom he met in London in 1982.
Although he continued to take supporting roles in mainstream
action flicks, Paxton defied typecasting by simultaneously appearing in
offbeat, independent productions: he played a boozy vampire with a
weakness for fast cars in Near Dark; he locked lips with a corpse for
The Dark Backward; and he wowed the critics with a rare starring role
as One False Move's flamboyant hick sheriff, Dale "Hurricane" Dixon.
Portraying weirdos may well have solidified his reputation as a gifted
actor, but it was Paxton's ability to play straight-shooters that finally
blew his career potential wide open. Offers began pouring in after his
earnest turn as astronaut and family man Fred Haise in Apollo 13.
Paxton knew exactly what he wanted to do after Apollo 13
touched down, and he took pains to be uncommonly prepared for his
meeting with Twister director Jan De Bont by paying a visit to the grave
of Buster Keaton. Whatever Buster had to say must have been good
advice--Paxton landed a role in what turned out to be one of the biggest
moneymakers in the history of cinema. But don't think that fame has
spoiled Paxton; heck, it hasn't even gotten his name right. Twister was
still tearing through theatres across the land when he made an
appearance at the premiere of Independence Day, where a reporter
asked him what it felt like to be the star of the two blockbuster hit
movies of the summer. It seems Paxton is frequently mistaken for that
other Bill, ID4's alien-battling president, Bill Pullman. But Paxton will go
a long way towards rectifying this case of mistaken identity in an
upcoming string of romantic lead assignments: he mixes it up with Shirley
MacLaine in the big-screen adaptation of Larry McMurtry's The
Evening Star; he falls hard for newcomer Julianna Margulies in the
upcoming Traveler, which also marks his feature-film-producing debut;
and he pairs with oft-corseted Kate Winslet for James Cameron's
Titanic, due to arrive in theatres in 1997.
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