Bill Paxton passed away Saturday due to complications from surgery.
The 61-year-old actor had 2 children and was married to his second wife.
Paxton, a Fort Worth, Texas, native, appeared in dozens of movies and television shows and seemed to be around when history was made both on and off screen.
As a boy, he was in the crowd that welcomed President John F. Kennedy in Texas on the morning of Nov. 22, 1963, hours before Kennedy was killed in Dallas. As a young man, he worked in the art department for "B" movie king Roger Corman, who helped launch the careers of numerous actors and filmmakers.
One of the industry's busiest actors, Paxton once said the hardest part of his career wasn't the work itself, but the time in between.
"You know all the time I've been in this business which is a long, long time now, I go from having incredible days like shooting the part of Sam Houston and then all of a sudden I'm home and I'm out of work and it's two o'clock in the afternoon, I'm in my boxer shorts watching Turner Classic Movies," he told The Associated Press in 2015. "And all I can tell you is, thank God for Turner Classic Movies and Robert Osborn. "