From A Simple Plan to Titanic: Bill Paxton's best movies
Bill Paxton, who has died at age 61, was one of cinema’s great everymen. Whenever directors sought humility and humanity in an actor, his was one of the first names on the list.
As part of the ensemble cast in Aliens he very nearly stole the movie from Sigourney Weaver, playing a marine whipped into panic by the face-eating monsters. In Titanic, he brought perspective and poignancy to James Cameron’s Oscar-bound juggernaut with a quiet performance as a modern day treasure hunter trying to unlock the secrets of the maritime disaster. Perhaps his greatest role was on the small screen, as sympathetic husband to multiple wives in the HBO television series Big Love.
He died on Sunday as a result of complications from surgery. “It is with heavy hearts we share the news that Bill Paxton has passed away due to complications from surgery,” his family said in a statement. He is survived by his second wife, Louise Newbury and by his children, Lydia (19) and James (22).
Paxton grew up in Forth Worth, Texas – his father was a lumber salesman who occasionally dabbled in amateur theatre. As a young boy he was part of the crowd that cheered the arrival of John F Kennedy to Dallas on the day of the President’s assassination in November 1963.
He began his career as a set-dresser and broke into acting with a number of low-profile television parts. His big opportunity came when James Cameron – with whom he would have an ongoing creative relationship – gave him a part in Terminator as one of the street hoodlums who confront Arnold Schwarzenegger’s time-travelling cyborg.
But it was as the flustered Private Hudson in Aliens that Paxton truly arrived. He served as stand-in for the audience as he lost his cool in the face of the endless xenomorph onslaught. “Game over man!” would become a nerd catchphrase for the ages.
As with many mid-range Hollywood stars Paxton eventually moved into television. As the rumpled patriarch in the HBO bigamy caper Big Love, Paxton’s dad-next-door likeability proved a vital asset. To make an audience sympathise with a man who regarded three wives as his due entitlement requires considerable charm – but we were on Paxton’s side from the start.
In a cruel irony, Paxton’s final film, a forthcoming adaptation of the David Eggers Silicon Valley-set The Circle, will see him play the terminally ill father of Emma Watson’s character.
Here are Paxton’s 10 most memorable performances
1: Hudson, Aliens (1986)
“I am the ultimate badass! State of the badass art!” Paxton’s Private Hudson declares as the Colonial Marines embark on their high orbit drop to the xenomorph-infested settlement below. However, Hudson’s bravado melts into eyeballs-on-stalk panic as the aliens reduce the soldiers to literal mince-meat. As the jelly-legged grunt, Paxton gave us one of film’s all-time great scaredy cats. How we cheered as he had his moment of redemption, bravely ploughing into the aliens until grabbed from below. Tellingly, Aliens was much less interesting with Hudson out of the picture.
2: Severen, Near Dark (1987)
Kathryn Bigelow’s before-its-time portrayal of a family of vampires as low-life vagrants is remembered for Lance Henriksen searing lead performance as blood-drinker-in-chief. However, Paxton owned the movie as the psychotic Severen – a nasty piece of work even by white trash vampire standards. There’s a punk edge to Paxton – other vampires kill largely out of necessity, but the sociopathic Severen revels in every ripped artery and gushing jugular.
3: Dale “Hurricane” Dixon, One False Move (1992)
A knife-edge psychological thriller with Paxton and Billy Bob Thornton giving career-best performances as men with secrets drawn into a bloody conflict. Paxton played the unsophisticated sheriff of small town whose hick mannerisms conceal a dark past. Opposite the larger than life Thornton, Paxton proved a master of understatement – communicating a world of feeling with every darting glance and drawn-out silence.
4 Sleazy Cars Salesman, True Lies (1994)
It’s just a cameo but Paxton lights up this otherwise dreary Arnie punch-fest. He’s a slimy car salesman pretending to be an international spy in order to seduce Arnie’s wife, played by Jamie Lee Curtis. With his sweaty mop and creepy moustache, it was a reminder that Paxton could go funny as convincingly as he could summon the maniac within.
5: Fred Haise, Apollo 13 (1995)
Paxton achieves blast-off in a role that could easily have come off as a mere adjunct to Tom Hanks’ authoritative turn as the commander of a stricken lunar mission. Haise is part of the team of astronauts who set off for the moon only for things to go disastrously awry when an oxygen tank explodes. Despite the glamorous Nasa space programme setting, this Ron Howard Oscar-bagger is at heart a film about normal men required to undertake extraordinary acts – and Paxton is the ideal actor to sell us on the concept.
6: Zack, The Last Supper (1996)
An opinion dividing slab of social commentary-disguised-as horror in which a group of smug liberals murder bigots and fundamentalists. It’s supremely silly – yet Paxton mesmerises as the racist gulf war veteran who so horrifies the students inviting him to dinner that they do him in. It’s a manic bit from Paxton - but you absolutely believe him as a red neck racist who feels strongly that Hitler had one or two good ideas.
7: Bill "The Extreme" Harding, Twister (1996)
Paxton plays a tornado “storm chaster” with a near-suicidal indifference to his personal well being. The film, which chronicles the rivalry between team of weather researchers during tornado season in Oklahoma, is really just an excuse to have cows, cars and barns lifted into the air and tossed into the horizon. But Paxton brings crucial grit to Harding, who, in the hands of a less gifted actor, might have came across as a cartoonish mad-scientist. He has real chemistry with co-star Helen Hunt too – somehow they hold their own against the deafening special effects.
8: Brock Lovett, Titanic (1998)
Titanic is remembered today for Leo ’n Kate locking arms in that weird pose as the boat chugs romantically towards a killer iceberg. However, much of the film’s power comes from its flash-back framing, with Gloria Stewart playing Winslet’s character as an old woman reflecting on her doomed love affair on the cursed cruise-ship. As the salvage hunter coaxing the story from Rose, Paxton gets it absolutely right – he is pushy yet, as audience stand-in, also convincingly moved by her reminisces.
9: Hank Mitchell, A Simple Plan (1998)
Paxton reunited with Billy Bob Thornton in Sam Raimi’s supremely tense thriller. He plays a blue collar striver in deepest Minnesota whose life is turned upside down with the discovery of a $4 million stash. However, attempts to keep the find a secret between him, his socially challenged brother and their friend, go predictably awry, with grisly consequences. As hard-working stiff beaten down by life Paxton has never been more believable – the film was hailed as a break-out for schlock horror graduate Raimi yet was testament, too, to Paxton’s tremendous subtlety on screen.
10: Bill Henrickson, Big Love (2006-2011)
Paxton’s first major television role was as the head of a Mormon sect that continues to practice bigamy. He is spiritual leader of the community and doting husband to wives played by Jean Tripplehorn, Chloe Savigny and Ginnifer Goodwin. This was a tough ask for Paxton whose character could easily have been a fundamental loon. But he gives us Henrickson as a striving family man, trying to do his best for all the special ladies in his life.
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