Bill Paxton‘s career began in the early 80s, with small roles in Ivan Reitman’s Stripes, Walter Hill’s Streets of Fire, and then playing the leader of a punk gang in James Cameron’s The Terminator. This was the start of a beautiful friendship that lasted between the pair – through 1986’s Aliens and 1997’s Titanic.
Cameron and Paxton even had the bonding experience of surviving the ‘PCP-laced clam chowder’ poisoning incident while making Titanic, and there is a video that has circled the internet that appears to show Paxton breaking the news of 9/11 to Cameron for the first time. Paxton also starred in Kathryn Bigelow’s brilliant vampire movie Near Dark when Bigelow and Cameron were a couple.
Given that Paxton was already friends with Cameron when Aliens came around, you’d expect him to have been a shoe-in for the role of Hudson. But Paxton explained that it wasn’t quite that simple in an interview with Den of Geek in 2013; “At the time I was so excited to get the call from Jim Cameron, who I was a good friend of, but a lot of times your friends are the last people to hire you, but not Jim.”
Paxton continued; “I auditioned and thought I did okay, but I didn’t think I got it….My name came up and Jim said, ‘Well I know Bill, would the studio be okay with him?’ and [Scott Rudin, producer said] ‘Well he’s getting some very good notices for a John Hughes comedy movie called Weird Science,’ and so Jim said, ‘Well gosh, I’d love to cast Bill,’ and Scott said ‘Well, we’ll back that.'”
![YouTube Thumbnail](https://img.youtube.com/vi/qrjFuTbl_SA/hqdefault.jpg)
Paxton concluded that getting the part was only half the battle; “I got the call and Jim said, ‘I want you to join us on Aliens.’ And I couldn’t believe my good fortune! But making the movie was kind of daunting for me, because it was a character that had an energy that was hard to sustain, but it’s become a classic. God, my son told me you can go on the internet and somebody’s cut all my lines from the movie together in a montage! [laughs]”
Check out our guide to the best alien movies, the best robot movies, and our Aliens review.