Paxton, a tall rugged actor with boyish good looks and an intense demeanor, had begun making super 8mm movies as a teenager before seriously entering film work as a set dresser for Roger Corman's New World Pictures beginning with "Big Bad Mama" in 1974. After appearing as an extra in "Crazy Mama" (1975), a Corman quickie helmed by Jonathan Demme, he moved to NYC to study acting. Paxton landed roles in a couple of low-budget horror films, including "Mortuary" (filmed in 1981, released in 1983) before winning a small role in Ivan Reitman's "Stripes" (1981). Around the same time, he began to produce, write and direct short films like "Fish Heads" (1982) shown on NBC's "Saturday Night Live". Paxton continued to appear on TV as a guest ("Miami Vice", "The Hitchhiker") and in movies and miniseries ("The Atlanta Child Murders", CBS 1985; "Fresno", CBS 1986).
After small roles in Walter Hill's "Streets of Fire" and James Cameron's "The Terminator" (both 1984), Paxton made his mark on the big screen with his first major supporting role in John Hughes' "Weird Science" (1985), as Chet, the loathsome, sadistic older brother of Ilan Mitchell-Smith. He went on to memorable supporting roles as a cocksure space marine in Cameron's "Aliens" (1986) and as a hard-drinking, wild-driving vampire in Kathryn Bigelow's "Near Dark" (1987). In John Irvin's "Next of Kin" (1989), Paxton was the younger, truck-driving brother of Patrick Swayze and Liam Neeson. He was a sharpshooter involved in the rescue of hostages in the action adventure "Navy SEALS" and a golf-loving cop in "Predator 2" (both 1990).
In Adam Rifkin's black comedy "The Dark Backward" (1991), he garnered praise as the amoral friend of a comic who grows a third arm on his back. In 1992, Paxton clicked as Dale 'Hurricane' Dixon, the ambitious small town sheriff on the trail of a trio of killers in director Carl Franklin's acclaimed modern noir, "One False Move". He also acted with rappers Ice Cube and Ice-T in Walter Hill's "Trespass", portraying a morally conflicted Arkansas fireman on a treasure hunt who gets entangled with a mean gang. Paxton worked with a more genteel ensemble in "Indian Summer" (1993), a nostalgic reverie on lost youth. That same year, he was featured as Morgan Earp in "Tombstone". Paxton was a sleazy used car salesman in James Cameron's "True Lies" (1994) and was astronaut Fred Haise, sick with the flu during most of the troubled flight of "Apollo 13" (1995).
Paxton appeared in the leading role of a scientist who studies tornadoes opposite Helen Hunt in Jan De Bont's "Twister" (1996). He was featured in "The Last Supper" (1996), about a group of students whose political and social debates eventually lead to murder. He was also cast as Shirley MacLaine's therapist-lover in Robert Harling's "Evening Star" (also 1996). "Traveler" (1997) marked Paxton's debut as producer. Directed by noted cinematographer Jack N Green, it recounted the story of an Irish grifter (Paxton) whose life becomes complicated when he falls in love with one of his marks (Julianna Margulies). That same year, he appeared as a diver searching the underwater wreck of the titular ship in modern-day sequences in James Cameron's Oscar-winning blockbuster "Titanic.”
In 1998, Paxton co-starred in the ill-fated movie "A Simple Plan", a feature about three men whose decision to keep a bag of money leads to betrayal and murder. He was then cast as the captain of a submarine ship in the "U-571." (2000). In 2002, joined Robert Rodriguez and Antonio Banderas in the family adventure feature "Spy Kids 2: The Island Of Lost Dreams,” where he portrayed an owner of a theme park. After mirroring his “Titanic” performance as an observer in James Cameron’s IMAX documentary, “Ghosts of the Abyss” (2003), Paxton appeared in the awful big screen, live-action adaptation of the cheesy sci-fi puppet series "Thunderbirds" (2004), playing billionaire adventurer and family patriarch Jeff Tracy—a rare misstep for the actor. But he redeemed himself that same year with a wonderful turn in the off-kilter comedy "Broken Lizard's Club Dread" as the Jimmy Buffett-esque ex-pop singer Coconut Pete, washed up after Buffett's "Margaritaville" tanked his own tune "Pina Colada-berg" and now the owner of an island resort plagued by a serial killer.
The actor made his directorial debut in 2002 with "Frailty" in which he also played a father who leads his two sons in a series of murders that were commanded, he believes, by an angel. Dark and brilliant and filled with fearful prospects, "Frailty" showed Paxton's promise as an edgy and inventive filmmaker. His directing follow-up, "The Greatest Game Ever Played" (2005) took a different direction than his first film. “The Greatest Game” was a Disney-produced underdog sports film depicting the true 1913 story of the young working-class American amateur Francis Ouimet (Shia LaBeouf) who defeated the famed British player Harry Vardon to win the U.S. Open, devoting a considerable amount of time to the final rounds and playing like a lengthy sports telecast. Critics were divided on the film—many called it predictable and lugubrious, while others found it rousing and suspenseful—and ticket buyers were largely indifferent.
Paxton continued to show his range when he starred in the controversial and much-hyped HBO series, “Big Love” (2006- ), playing Bill Hendrickson, a man married to three women (Jeanne Tripplehorn, Chloe Sevigny and Ginnifer Goodwin) who finds out how difficult life can be as a modern-day polygamist. The subject matter of the series aroused both interest and controversy, the latter prompting the producers to put a disclaimer before every episode that stated the Mormon Church banned polygamy in 1890. Nonetheless, “Big Love” premiered in March 2006 to good reviews, many of which cited the appealing chemistry between Paxton’s character and his chief antagonist, Roman Grant (Harry Dean Stanton), a cunning prophet leader who runs a rural fundamentalist group and expects Hendrickson to pay out a 15 percent cut of his hardware business.