Bill Paxton

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.

William Paxton (May 17, 1955 – February 25, 2017) was an American actor and filmmaker.

Bill 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 Roman Catholic who raised him and his siblings in her faith.

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.

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.

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

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.

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 worked alongside Arnold Schwarzenegger in James Cameron's The Terminator (1984) and in Commando (1985) and True Lies (1994).

He had supporting roles in Weird Science (1985), Edge of Tomorrow (2014), and Nightcrawler (2014).

He also appeared in Weird Science (1985).

He starred in films such as Aliens (1986), Near Dark (1987), Tombstone (1993), True Lies (1994), Apollo 13 (1995), Twister (1996), Titanic (1997), Mighty Joe Young (1998), and A Simple Plan (1998).

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.

In 1987, Paxton played the most psychotic of the vampires, Severen, in Kathryn Bigelow's critically acclaimed neo-Western horror film, Near Dark.

In 1990, Paxton appeared in Predator 2 (1990).

In 1990, he co-starred with Charlie Sheen and Michael Biehn in Navy Seals.

In his other roles, Paxton played Morgan Earp in Tombstone (1993), Fred Haise in Apollo 13 (1995), Bill Harding in Twister (1996), and lead roles in dark dramas such as One False Move (1992) and A Simple Plan (1998).

Paxton also appeared in Indian Summer (1993) and Mighty Joe Young (1998).

He collaborated with James Cameron again on True Lies (1994) and Titanic (1997), the latter of which was the highest-grossing film of all time at its release.

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).

Paxton was of Austrian, Dutch, English, French, German, Norwegian, Scotch-Irish, Scottish, Swiss, and Welsh descent.

After 2000, he appeared in U-571 (2000), Vertical Limit (2000), Frailty (2001), Broken Lizard's Club Dread (2004), Thunderbirds (2004), Edge of Tomorrow (2014) and Nightcrawler (2014).

Paxton directed the feature films Frailty (2001), in which he also starred, and The Greatest Game Ever Played (2005).

Four years after appearing in Titanic, he joined Cameron on an expedition to the wreck of the Titanic.

A film about this trip, Ghosts of the Abyss was released in 2003.

He also appeared in the music video for Limp Bizkit's 2003 song "Eat You Alive" as a sheriff.

In addition, Paxton also played a character in both Spy Kids 2 and Spy Kids 3-D.

Paxton starred in the HBO drama series Big Love (2006–2011), for which he earned three Golden Globe Award nominations during the show's run.

His highest-profile television performances received much positive attention, including his lead role in HBO's Big Love (2006–2011), for which Paxton received three Golden Globe Award nominations.

He was nominated for a Primetime Emmy Award and a Screen Actors Guild Award for portraying Randall McCoy in the History channel miniseries Hatfields & McCoys (2012).