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The death of actor and occasional director Bill Paxton has been announced, he died during heart surgery after falling ill. A Texan native, he got his first break from Roger Corman in the seventies, and went on to be a fixture of genre movies in the following decade, helped by an association with emerging director James Cameron: they would make The Terminator, Aliens, True Lies and Titanic together, and Paxton had a great role as a vampire in Cameron's ex-wife Katherine Bigelow's Near Dark.
Other strong impressions were made with Streets of Fire, Impulse, Weird Science, Commando, Slipstream, Next of Kin, Brain Dead (with Bill Pullman, who he was sometimes mistaken for), Predator 2, The Dark Backward, One False Move (one of his first leads, and a superb performance), Trespass, Boxing Helena, Tombstone, Apollo 13, Twister, A Simple Plan, Mighty Joe, Frailty (which he directed), two Spy Kids movies, Club Dread, Thunderbirds, Haywire, 2 Guns, Edge of Tomorrow and Nightcrawler, among various television roles. His wide range was expertly employed in so many memorable performances that it's not an exaggeration to say cult movies have suffered a big loss today. |
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