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Fort Worth actor Bill Paxton of 'Titanic' and 'Twister' dies at 61

Family representatives said he died after complications from surgery.

Actor Bill Paxton, a native of Fort Worth, died Saturday due to complications from surgery. He was 61.

Family representatives confirmed his death to ABC through a statement.

"A loving husband and father, Bill began his career in Hollywood working on films in the art department and went on to have an illustrious career spanning four decades as a beloved and prolific actor and filmmaker," the statement read.

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His most prominent work includes roles in the films Titanic, Aliens, Twister and Apollo 13. Paxton also nabbed the leading male role in the HBO drama Big Love, about a Utah businessman with three wives who has to keep his polygamist family a secret.

The show aired from 2006 to 2011. Paxton's performance earned him three Golden Globe award nominations for best actor.

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Paxton also played Texas military hero Sam Houston in the History Channel 2015 miniseries Texas Rising.

"I'm related to Sam Houston on my father's side," he told GuideLive in 2015. "We're second cousins, four times removed."

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Paxton said he had long wanted to play Houston, commander in chief of the Texas Army and victor over Mexican Gen. Santa Anna in the Battle of San Jacinto in 1836.

During his Fort Worth days, Paxton made Super-8 movies  with friends and made music videos for a band called Martini Ranch.

Paxton was 8 years old when he, his older brother and their father went to see then-President John F. Kennedy speak at Hotel Texas in downtown Fort Worth on Nov. 22, 1963.

The actor recorded his recollections for the Sixth Floor Museum at Dealey Plaza in Dallas in 2007.

Dallas Observer reported that Paxton appeared in footage of the crowd that gathered to greet Kennedy. Paxton described how a black man he had just met hoisted him onto his shoulders so he could have a better view of the president.

"He made a joke about his wife, Jackie, not being there but of course she took a little longer to get ready in the morning but she looked a lot better," Paxton told the Fort Worth Star-Telegram in 2013. "I remember just a really euphoric crowd. I was a bit young to really understand later the consequences of the event."

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Paxton also produced Parkland, a 2013 movie based on the events at Parkland Memorial Hospital in Dallas after Kennedy's assassination.

"There was an innocence that died that day," he said.

Paxton was born on May 17, 1955. He was the son of a Fort Worth lumber executive, who on Saturdays would take Paxton and his brother to downtown Fort Worth for a movie and discuss it with them afterward.

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"Sometimes we'd go to Dallas to see an art film that wasn't playing in Fort Worth," Paxton told The Dallas Morning News in 2002. "But mostly, we'd follow the same ritual. We'd part at the First National Bank [in downtown Fort Worth] and walk real fast to the Worth, the Hollywood or the Palace on Seventh Street. I couldn't wait for the movie to start."

Paxton spent part of his childhood in the small community of Aledo but graduated from Arlington Heights High School in Fort Worth. He moved to California in the 1970s.

He was, sci-fi fans like to point out, the only actor killed by a Predator, a Terminator and an Alien.

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But Paxton, famously genial and well-liked throughout Hollywood, defined his career less by his marquee status than as a character actor whose regular Joes appeared across the likes of One False MoveA Simple Plan and Nightcrawler.

The actor was starring as a rogue detective in the CBS series Training Day. He also had a role in the upcoming Tom Hanks film The Circle, a thriller about a woman's rise through the ranks of a powerful tech company.

Paxton is survived by his wife, Louise Newbury, and two children. The couple met in 1982 in London, when Paxton spotted Newbury boarding a double-decker bus and jumped aboard to talk to her.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.