Bill Paxton in Greatest Game Ever Played, The (2005)
BILL PAXTON (Director) has been flourishing over the past several years as both an actor and a filmmaker. Paxton made his feature directorial debut in 2002 with the critically acclaimed thriller, Frailty. The film, which starred Paxton, Matthew McConaughey, Powers Booth, and Matt O’Leary, received the National Board of Review’s Special Mention for Excellence in Filmmaking.
Paxton has appeared in several blockbusters, accumulating worldwide box-office numbers that surpass three billion dollars. In addition to Jim Cameron’s Titanic, he starred with Tom Hanks and Kevin Bacon in Ron Howard’s Apollo 13 and in Jan de Bont’s Twister. Paxton appeared as the tough Texas billionaire, trapped at 26,000 feet on K2 in the action-thriller Vertical Limit, directed by Martin Campbell. He also portrayed the captain in Jonathan Mostow’s WWII submarine hit U-571.
Moving to Hollywood from Fort Worth, Texas, Paxton began his career as a set dresser on Roger Corman’s Big Bad Mama. After working in the art department on several features, he decided to move to New York to study acting. Returning to Los Angeles in 1980, he met James Cameron while moonlighting as a set dresser on the low-budget sci-fi movie Galaxy of Terror. Subsequently he started landing acting jobs, first in B-horror movies (Mortuary, Night Warning) and later in studio films.
Paxton’s critically lauded performance as the small-town sheriff in Carl Franklin’s One False Move marked his emergence as a leading man. In 1998, Roger Ebert cited Paxton as best actor for his turn as Hank Mitchell in Sam Raimi’s A Simple Plan. In addition, he received a Golden Globe® nomination that year for his performance as Colonel John Paul Vann in HBO’s A Bright Shining Lie.
Paxton’s diverse filmography also includes Streets of Fire, Trespass, Near Dark and Tombstone; the comedies Weird Science, Indian Summer, Broken Lizard’s Club Dread and this summer’s Thunderbirds; and Traveller, a film he produced and starred in with Mark Wahlberg and Julianna Margulies.
In April, Paxton began filming the series Big Love for HBO in which he plays a polygamist living with three wives and assorted children in three houses at the end of a cul-de-sac in the Salt Lake City suburbs. It co-stars Jeanne Tripplehorn, Chloe Sevigny, Bruce Dern, and Harry Dean Stanton; the producer is his Apollo 13 co-star Tom Hanks. The show will begin airing in January.
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