Bill Paxton, the actor who was seemingly in every movie throughout much of the ’80s and ’90s, has died. He was 61.
The Fort Worth, Texas native passed away on Saturday (February 25) after complications from heart surgery, reports TMZ.
Over his nearly four-decade acting career, he appeared in all sorts of blockbusters, including Twister, Apollo 13, Titanic, Weird Science and True Lies. He also starred in HBO’s Big Love from 2006-2011, a role that earned him three Golden Globe nominations.
He had the distinct honor of being the first actor to get killed by The Terminator (in the first installment of that series), The Predator (Predator 2) and a Xenomorph (Aliens). Lance Henriksen is the only other actor to have achieved that particular death trilogy.
Paxton was also a supporter of underground Hip Hop, a genre he gained appreciation for through his son James. In a 2009 appearance on The Today Show, he namedropped some of the groups they’d seen perform live together.
“I came to it kind of late,” he explains. “A lot of the big rappers I’d listened to, but really my son James … and I, and a couple of his buddies went to see Three 6 Mafia at UCSB in the fall and since then he’s taken me to see People Under The Stairs … They can’t drive yet and we live way the hell out in the country so these venues are really far away … We’ve seen Jedi Mind Tricks out of Philadelphia, we saw another guy named Murs … Entertaining. A lot of these guys have something to say.”
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Paxton explained that it was his son who turned him onto the music, and that he does genuinely enjoy it.
“I’m not trying to stay hip. I actually really like it,” he explained.
Bill Paxton and his son, James “JPax” Paxton in 2017.
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He’s survived by his wife of 30 years Louise Newbury and their two children, James and Lydia.
