A Paxton Primer

By RaeAnne Marsh

Maintaining a friendly smile and straight eye contact, Bill Paxton shares, "My dad taught me my social skills, how to get on with people." The warmth of Paxton's greeting never falters although his posture gives a hint of fatigue.

His eyes are bright; thirty years in what he calls "the game" of Hollywood hasn't dimmed the little-boy eagerness that took him, straight out of high school in 1973, from Ft. Worth, Texas, to try for a career with film. It was that very naiveté that let him go for the long shot. "If I'd have waited ten years to do that, I would've never gotten out there. The realities of life, by the time you're in your late 20s, make it hard for you to go and do anything that hare-brained."

In the egocentric world of Hollywood celebrity-dom, this observation seems remarkably self-deprecating. The implied recklessness even seems somewhat at odds with his easy-going and cooperative demeanor. There is no mistaking the point, however, when he says that "one of the greatest things anyone can have...[is]...the innocence of youth; the naiveté of not really realizing how insurmountable a wall or an aura or something you're trying to accomplish could be." In his case, it was going to a city fabled for crushing many a dream and dreamer - with no special training and knowing no one in town. Not all youth is so un-pragmatic, though, which is why so many people look back from later in life with a deep sense of loss over the risk not taken.

Of course, Paxton has the luxury of speaking from the security of success. His career may have started in obscurity as a set dresser in the art department on film sets, but he now has such a lengthy filmography that his name is a favorite in a Six Degrees of Separation-type parlor game.

"As an actor, I've gotten to work with some of the best directors of my generation," Paxton shares, singling out for special mention James Cameron (Titanic, 1997; True Lies, 1994; The Terminator, 1984), Sam Raimi (A Simple Plan, 1998), Ron Howard (Apollo 13, 1995), John Hughes (Weird Science, 1985), Walter Hill (Streets of Fire, 1984) and Jonathan Mostow (U-571,  2000; Aliens, 1986). "I've seen how it should be done, I've seen how it shouldn't be done, and something stuck."

One of the most important things that "stuck" is a recognition of the need for a director to have a well-thought-out vision for the film. Speaking as an actor, Paxton confides his worst experiences have been when the director had not thought it out clearly. "I saw a lack of vision and realized the ship was headed for the rocks," he says, declining to name names.

Regarding his relationship, as a director, with his actors, Paxton relates, "I have great empathy for my actors. They trust me because they know that I have been on the front end of that camera." Directors who haven't been actors may have a tough time relating to what that's like, he explains. "I have a deeper sense of what the performers have to do. And I communicate better in terms of what I want."

Asked about casting the lead for The Greatest Game Ever Played (2005) - the true story of a young man, Francis Ouimet, who overcame class barriers in the closed society of the early 1900s to play, and win, the U.S. Open golf tournament - Paxton's response includes the observation that "you always play an aspect of your own personality in whatever you're playing." Taking a cursory look over his filmography, this statement adds... color to Paxton's personality.

"As an actor, I want to be as honest and straight as I can be." That's especially true, he adds, when playing someone who really lived. Of his casting the slim, diminutive Shia LaBeouf as Ouimet, Paxton notes he looked for someone with selflessness and true humility, someone who's nervous in crowds, not someone who merely looked or sounded like the real person. "I needed somebody who embodied the kind of qualities that Francis had."

Paxton's respect for his craft goes even deeper, and Greatest Game offers him a vehicle to express it. In what Paxton describes as a pivotal scene, Francis attends a music hall performance where the singer awakens in him the sense of a greater force. "[It's] what I think we all want to hear, when we become an instrument - something greater than ourselves.

"Anyone who's worked very hard on a craft or an art to get to a certain precision in terms of execution and performance wants to get past all that stuff that holds you up - your ego, all the doubts," he asserts, comparing the effort to "trying to get to a Zen-like place."

Paxton was accompanied on his "barnstorming" tour promoting Greatest Game by his dad, who, he says, has been a great champion and a great friend. "I've been devoted to my dad all my life," he confides. "He taught me how to cultivate people that you want to either work for or get to know." Some of the advice: "If you meet someone you admire, acknowledge that; follow up [your meeting] with a letter." His dad, who supported Paxton's Hollywood dream but observed, "I think you've chosen a really screwed business," caught the acting bug himself and has several films on his resumé, including the Spiderman (2002, 2004) movies and Bill's earlier directorial feature, Frailty (2001).

Paxton's son appears briefly in Greatest Game, although Paxton says he's not pushing him in the business. Paxton's own youth has more in common with the character in his new movie: Like Francis Ouimet, Paxton grew up across the street from a golf course and it became his backyard. "I was a club rat. I swam in the creeks, I dove in the ponds, I hunted in the bushes and the forest for balls; I was always on the course."