Bill Paxton Biography

Quick Facts

NAME: Bill Paxton
OCCUPATION: Actor
BIRTH DATE: May 17, 1955 (Age: 58)
EDUCATION: New York University
PLACE OF BIRTH: Fort Worth, Texas
ZODIAC SIGN: Taurus

Best Known For

Actor Bill Paxton has made a name for himself with such films as Apollo 13 and Twister and the television series Big Love.

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Bill Paxton

APA Style

Bill Paxton. (2013). The Biography Channel website. Retrieved 10:41, May 19, 2013, from http://www.biography.com/people/bill-paxton-20825057.

Harvard Style

Bill Paxton. [Internet]. 2013. The Biography Channel website. Available from: http://www.biography.com/people/bill-paxton-20825057 [Accessed 19 May 2013].

MLA Style

"Bill Paxton." 2013. The Biography Channel website. May 19 2013, 10:41 http://www.biography.com/people/bill-paxton-20825057.

MHRA Style

"Bill Paxton," The Biography Channel website, 2013, http://www.biography.com/people/bill-paxton-20825057 [accessed May 19, 2013].

Chicago Style

"Bill Paxton," The Biography Channel website, http://www.biography.com/people/bill-paxton-20825057 (accessed May 19, 2013).

CBE/CSE Style

Bill Paxton [Internet]. The Biography Channel website; 2013 [cited 2013 May 19] Available from: http://www.biography.com/people/bill-paxton-20825057.

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Bill Paxton, http://www.biography.com/people/bill-paxton-20825057 (last visited May 19, 2013).

AMA Style

Bill Paxton. The Biography Channel website. 2013. Available at: http://www.biography.com/people/bill-paxton-20825057. Accessed May 19, 2013.

He served as a producer for 1997's Traveller, a drama about a group of con artists. A few years later, Paxton made his directorial debut with the crime drama Frailty (2001) with Matthew McConaughey and Powers Boothe. He followed up that effort with the 2005 golfing story The Greatest Game Ever Played.

Television Triumphs

After several years of lackluster film roles, Paxton landed the leading role in a new television series. Big Love, which debuted in 2006, followed the lives of Bill Henrickson, a Utah businessman and polygamist, and his three wives. Jeanne Tripplehorn, Chloë Sevigny and Ginnifer Goodwin played Paxton's spouses in the popular drama. "I've always thought that the show is a metaphor for untraditional couples and untraditional families. We live in a modern society, where the traditional man-woman union isn't the only accepted norm anymore," he told Vanity Fair.

Paxton earned numerous positive reviews for his work on the series. Despite his character's unusual beliefs and practices, he succeeded at making Henrickson believable and real. As one critic put it, Paxton "takes what might have been an unsavory creep and makes him sweet, even universal: the ultimate overtaxed man."

After Big Love ended in 2011, Paxton moved on to other projects. He stars with Kevin Costner in the 2012 History Channel miniseries Hatfields & McCoys, about the legendary feuding families. Paxton plays Randall McCoy, and Costner plays "Devil" Anse Hatfield. Paxton will also appear the upcoming Civil War drama To Appomattox. On the big screen, he co-stars with Laurence Fishburne in the upcoming post-apocalyptic thriller The Colony.