STAR LOVED PLAYING REGULAR JOES
LOS ANGELES• Bill Paxton was a prolific and charismatic actor who had memorable roles in such blockbusters as “Apollo 13” and “Titanic” while also cherishing his work in “One False Move” and other low-budget movies and in the HBO series “Big Love.”
Paxton, a Fort Worth, Texas, native, was in the crowd that welcomed President John F. Kennedy in Texas on the morning of Nov. 22, 1963, hours before Kennedy was killed in Dallas. As a young man, he worked in the art department for “B" movie king Roger Corman, who helped launch the careers of numerous actors and filmmakers.
Paxton died over t he weekend from complications due to surgery. He was 61. A family representative provided no further details.
Paxton’s credits included some of the signature works of the past 40 years, from Titanic and Apollo 13 to The Terminator and Aliens. Television fans knew him for his role as a polygamist, with three wives who expected the best from him, in the HBO series Big Love, for which he received three Golden Globe nominations.
“Bill Paxton was a bighearted, thoughtful and honourable person,” his Big Love co-star Chloe Sevigny said in a statement. “He always had a smile on his face.”
Paxton was currently starring in the CBS drama Training Day, which premiered Feb. 2. The network has not announced whether it will continue to air the completed episodes.
Paxton was, sci-fi fans like to point out, the only actor killed by a Predator, a Terminator and an Alien. But the actor, famously genial and approachable, defined his career less by his marquee status than as a character actor whose regular Joes appeared across the likes of One False Move, A Simple Plan and Nightcrawler.
One of the industry’s busiest actors, Paxton once said the hardest part of his career wasn’t the work itself, but the time in between.
“I go from having incredible days like shooting the part of Sam Houston and then all of a sudden I’m home and I’m out of work and it’s two o’clock in the afternoon, I’m in my boxer shorts watching Turner Classic Movies,” he said in 2015. “And all I can tell you is, thank God for Turner Classic Movies and Robert Osborne."
Paxton is survived by his wife of 30 years, Louise Newbury, and two children.