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Paxton finds romance (times three) in ‘Love’

Film actor makes first foray into series TV in polygamist drama
/ Source: The Associated Press

Each winter at a Texas ranch owned by actor Bill Paxton’s family, an Angus bull would set up shop for a few months of intensive breeding.

“At first I thought, ’Man, this bull has the life.’ I was a teenage boy, I could see the advantage of that,” Paxton recalled. “Then I thought, ’Maybe this isn’t such a good deal.’ ... Sometimes he’d look at me with these eyes: Beware of what you wish for.”

The bull, he figures, shares common ground with his character in HBO’s new series “Big Love” (10 p.m. EST Sunday). Bill Henrickson is a polygamist with three wives, all of whom expect him to fully meet his financial, parental and, yes, sexual responsibilities.

“In some ways he is kind of a stud bull,” Paxton mused. “But it’s great to play a guy who’s trying to keep these women physically happy.”

The chance to star in a love story, albeit an unusual one with disturbing elements, was part of the show’s appeal for Paxton, a film actor, director and producer who is making his first foray into series television.

“I’m a frustrated romantic actor,” he said. “I wanted to play the Bud part in ’Splendor in the Grass,’ I wanted to play Romeo — the great, unrequited, tragic love stories. I’ve gotten to mix it up a bit with the ladies but the romance has been a subplot, running from the tornado or whatever.”

For a moment, pure mischief plays across the open, regular-guy face seen in “Twister,” “Titanic” and “Apollo 13.”

Henrickson “has a super libido. And what guy doesn’t want to play that?” Paxton said over the taco special at a Beverly Hills restaurant.

Three ‘I do’s’ make a don’tThe hero of “Big Love” is married to lovely and very different women: the spirited but childish Margene (Ginnifer Goodwin), manipulative and shopping-addicted Nicki (Chloe Sevigny) and first wife Barb (Jeanne Tripplehorn), a rock with a wounded heart.

There are times when three “I do’s” make a don’t. The wives are jealous of the time Henrickson spends with the others and seethe over any behavior that threatens their carefully arranged life, played out in three adjoining houses in Salt Lake City.

With society frowning on polygamy and with the practice long shunned by the Mormon church in which they were raised, the spouses rely on each other and their children to be discreet.

Dangerously complicating matters is Roman (Harry Dean Stanton), Nicki’s powerful father, who has a financial hold on Henrickson.

“We are not playing these people with parody or satire,” Paxton said. “We are playing these people dead earnest. I’m a guy who’s trying to do the right thing by his family and by his God. ... That’s what really guided me in the role.”

The actor’s own domestic situation is far more mundane. He and his wife, Louise, have been married for two decades and have a son, 12, and a daughter, 8. The couple met when he spotted her in a London bus queue, ran for the double-decker and brashly introduced himself.

While TV represents a career change for Paxton, 50, the setting for “Big Love” dovetails with the big-screen projects he holds dearest — and with his assessment of culture in general.

“I feel like I’m a regionalist and a populist who’s never fit in among the intellectuals,” Paxton said. “I think there’s where the heart of American art is. My greatest roles have been in regional films, whether it was ’One False Move’ or ’Frailty’ or ’Simple Plan’ or ’Traveller.’

“These are the richest roles I’ve been able to play,” he said of the films, which are set not in Los Angeles or New York but in places like small-town Arkansas, Texas and North Carolina.

He’s even more rhapsodic discussing fine arts in the American heartland.

There’s the Fort Worth area where he grew up, “the third-largest cultural fine-arts complex in the whole country. Nobody knows that,” Paxton said. He ticks off more examples: Tulsa, home to “one of the greatest museums in this country,” the Gilchrist, and museum-rich Iowa.

“My dad taught me, ‘Wherever you go, seek out their cultural treasures and you will be surprised,”’ Paxton said, who speaks warmly of John Paxton as his “advance man. He kind of gave me a little bit of a road map.”

Paxton’s dad, who was in the lumber business, is an avid art collector who exposed his children to the world of theater and film and who piqued his son’s interest in acting.

The family also happened to intersect with famous figures: As a youngster in Kansas City, John Paxton lived next door to the artist Thomas Hart Benton.

In Texas, golf great Ben Hogan was a member of the Shady Oaks club to which Paxton’s dad belonged and the two were friends. Bill Paxton recalled gathering golf balls as a youngster for Hogan.

“I was kind of afraid of him because I knew he was a great champ,” he said.

Paxton himself proves easily approachable. When a waiter — an aspiring actor, no surprise — handed him compliments along with the lunchtime check, the young man got more than thanks in return. Paxton promptly offered him a valued acting teacher’s name and phone number.

“I had a friend who worked (on a movie) with you and said you were really nice and made sure he got a line and screen credit,” the dazzled waiter said.

Paxton, man of the people.