BILL PAXTON

(17 May 1955 - 25 February 2017)

From the time he entered the film business, the American actor and sometime writer, producer and director Bill Paxton, seemed to be cast in eccentric character roles. He entered films as a set-dresser for Roger Corman’s New World Pictures company and made his film acting debut in Corman’s Crazy Mama (1975). Later on he studied acting at New York University and then secured several TV appearances while also making short films. He was in The Lords of Discipline and a number of minor movies including Taking Tiger Mountain written by William S. Burroughs and then came The Terminator and Commando, both with Arnold Schwarzenegger. Many films followed, including Weird Science, Aliens, Near Dark, Slipstream, Next of Kin, Predator 2, Tombstone, Future Shock, True Lies and Apollo 13 (as NASA astronaut Fred Haise). He was Frank in Frank and Jessie, about the James brothers, he chased a storm in Twister, searched for the RMS Titanic, and played Jeff Tracy in Thunderbirds (2004). More recently, apart from TV shows, Paxton graced Soderbergh’s Haywire, was in Edge of Tomorrow with Tom Cruise, Nightcrawler and Term Life. Paxton’s last film, The Circle, with Emma Watson and Tom Hanks, was released in 2017, in a career that notched up nearly a hundred film and TV appearances.

MICHAEL DARVELL