Bill Paxton Interview from Canada - Great Read on Big Love

http://www.canada.com/topics/entertainment/story.html?id=1168599

Paxton's Labour of Big Love

Kat Angus, Dose.ca - Published: Sunday, January 11, 2009

Bill Paxton is staring out his hotel room window in Toronto, but it doesn't seem as though he's really seeing anything outside.

That's how you can tell he's about to wax philosophical -- for the last half an hour, the Big Love star has gone from funny and self-deprecating one moment to contemplative and spiritual the next. You know you're in for a few of minutes of metaphysical rhetoric when he adopts his thousand-yard stare.

"What I like about Bill," he says at one point, referring to his character on Big Love, "is that he admits that he's lost and he's trying to find his way. In that way, he's not unique. He's every man. Every woman. All of us have been in a place where we say, 'Please, show me the way to keep going. I need a sign; I need to have faith in something besides myself.' That's the problem, we're so self-absorbed."

Paxton pauses, then turns away from the window and chuckles, the spell momentarily broken.

"I mean, me, I'm an actor, for God's sake," he adds. "You don't get any more self-absorbed than that."

It seems that Paxton's work on Big Love is the cause of his frequent self-reflection. While the 53-year-old character actor has spent more than three decades turning in solid performances in everything from Weird Science to Titanic to A Simple Plan, he considers his portrayal of Bill Henrickson, a Salt Lake City polygamist searching for life's answers, the most demanding and layered role he's ever done.

Filming Big Love's third season (premiering Jan. 18 on HBO Canada) lasted a gruelling four months, and while Paxton is clearly proud of both his work and the show as a whole, it's also clear that Big Love has taken a physical and an emotional toll on him.

"To me, it was just like running the Boston Marathon with a hundred-pound rucksack on your back. It was a hard season," he says, adding that he was surprised -- and even a little daunted -- by the third season's storylines. "They've ramped up everything this season. I mean, they've just put this thing on the boil and pedal to the metal -- it's a crazy experience. They throw everything and the kitchen sink in."

Paxton lets out a sigh and closes his eyes.

"And it's a long schedule, even after three seasons," he says. "I did movies for years and I just came off 120 shooting days (for Big Love) and I'm exhausted."

Before Big Love came along, Paxton never had any intention of doing TV, seeing it as a contaminated medium.

"Right out of the gate, you've got to deal with the sponsors, the advertisers, the standards and practices. The idea of commercial interruptions, that's like coitus interruptus! You're in the middle of a show and you cut to soap or hemorrhoid crap," he says. "But I did (Big Love) because of the quality that HBO is known for. Not just the quality of the writing or the originality or the groundbreaking, but because of the fidelity of the images. There's lighting, there's camera work, there's acting, there's editing. It's really tight. All shows have that but, to me, at a lesser level than all this artistry."

Another draw was the quality of the drama's pilot script, in which creators Mark V. Olsen and Will Scheffer were able to use the polygamist characters to tackle several different love and family issues at once.

"I thought these creators were very clever in having this great idea to do a series about polygamy as a prism to refract and project all kinds of contemporary issues about society's problems. Sex and family," Paxton says. "It's a rich vein they've tapped into. Like I said, it seems like the root system in this thing has so many places to go."

And even after three seasons, Paxton is still surprised by how much he genuinely likes and identifies with his character, a man with three wives (potentially four, if things go his way in the show's forthcoming third season) who is in constant battle with the members of his religious sect and his judgmental neighbours.

"Are you kidding? I love this guy! Because he is able to take on so much and takes it on in a way -- it's a herculean task! Three women, emotionally, physically, romantically -- that's almost impossible," Paxton insists. "I love the idea that Bill's looking for affirmation and revelation and epiphany. I feel like we live in modern times and people are rootless and they don't know where they came from and they don't know where they're going.

"Well, no one knows ultimately where they're going; it's out of our control. But they have no direction because they've lost connection with their past. They don't have a moral compass or an ethical compass to guide them because they just never found that. I admire Bill greatly for having those attributes. He's hanging on and he keeps going."

In case you couldn't tell, Paxton is staring out the window again.

"(Big Love) deals with age-old things," he muses. "Life and marriage and religion and God -- it'll be around forever, this show, because of those themes, whereas some of these shows are niche shows. In ten years, you won't remember them."

He shifts his gaze back to inside the hotel room.

"But Bill's an idealized character. I mean, the guy from Twister with three beautiful, starlet wives?" he says, raising an eyebrow. "I don't consider it realism. It's symbolic. It's metaphorical."

Which is why, despite the long hours and the emotionally draining scenes, the actor who never wanted to do television is fully committed to Big Love.

"I think I'm in it for the long haul," Paxton says, nodding to himself. "I mean, I don't think I'll have the stamina to play the guy for a decade, but if they can keep the writing going, I think we're good for at least six seasons. I think it's going to be my definitive piece."

Again, a moment passes before he breaks out of his philosophical trance and laughs softly.

"Besides Weird Science, I mean."

Season 3 of Big Love premieres Sunday, Jan. 18 at 9 p.m. on HBO Canada