William Paxton was an American actor and filmmaker.
29 Facts About Bill Paxton
2.
Bill Paxton is known as a leading man for starring in films such as Weird Science, Aliens, Near Dark, Tombstone, True Lies, Apollo 13, Twister, Titanic, Mighty Joe Young, and A Simple Plan.
3.
Bill Paxton later took supporting roles in Edge of Tomorrow, and Nightcrawler.
4.
Bill Paxton starred in the HBO drama series Big Love, for which he earned three Golden Globe Award nominations during the show's run.
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Bill Paxton was born in Fort Worth, Texas, on May 17,1955, the son of Mary Lou and John Lane Paxton.
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Bill Paxton's mother was a Roman Catholic who raised him and his siblings in her faith.
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Bill Paxton's father was a businessman, lumber wholesaler, museum executive, and an occasional actor, notably appearing in Sam Raimi's Spider-Man films as Bernard Houseman and alongside Paxton in A Simple Plan.
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Bill Paxton was of Austrian, Dutch, English, French, German, Norwegian, Scotch-Irish, Scottish, Swiss, and Welsh descent.
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Bill Paxton's great-great-grandfather was Elisha Franklin Paxton, a brigadier general in the Confederate Army during the Civil War who was killed commanding the Stonewall Brigade at the Battle of Chancellorsville.
10.
Bill Paxton later co-produced the film Parkland about the assassination.
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Bill Paxton 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.
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Bill Paxton subsequently moved to Los Angeles, where he worked in props and art departments and as a parking valet at the Beverly Hills Hotel.
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Bill Paxton 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.
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Bill Paxton worked alongside Arnold Schwarzenegger in James Cameron's The Terminator and in Commando.
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In 1987, Bill Paxton played the most psychotic of the vampires, Severen, in Kathryn Bigelow's critically acclaimed neo-Western horror film, Near Dark.
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Bill Paxton collaborated with James Cameron again on True Lies and Titanic, the latter of which was the highest-grossing film of all time at its release.
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Bill Paxton appeared in Indian Summer and Mighty Joe Young.
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Bill Paxton directed the feature films Frailty, in which he starred, and The Greatest Game Ever Played.
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Bill Paxton appeared in the music video for Limp Bizkit's 2003 song "Eat You Alive" as a sheriff.
20.
Bill Paxton starred alongside Jon Bernthal, Rose McGowan and John Malkovich as a playable character in the 2014 video game Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare.
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Bill Paxton starred as General Sam Houston in the Western miniseries Texas Rising for The History Channel in 2015.
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In February 2016, Bill Paxton was cast as Detective Frank Rourke for Training Day, a crime-thriller television series set 15 years after the events of the eponymous 2001 movie.
23.
Bill Paxton married Kelly Rowan in 1979 and they divorced a year later.
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Bill Paxton later met Louise Newbury on the Number 13 bus in London, where she was a student, and they were married in 1987.
25.
In early 2017, Bill Paxton stated in an interview on WTF with Marc Maron that he had a damaged aortic heart valve, resulting from rheumatic fever which he contracted as a child.
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Bill Paxton was cremated and his ashes were buried at the Forest Lawn Memorial Park of Hollywood Hills.
27.
In February 2022, Bill Paxton's family reached a partial settlement with General Anesthesia Specialists Partnership for $1 million.
28.
Bill Paxton believed in the magic of what we can bring to people.
29.
Bill Paxton worked with both Cameron and Horner on the former two films.