Paxton finds romance (times three) in ‘Love’

updated 5:55 p.m. ET March 23, 2006

BEVERLY HILLS, Calif. - 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’t
The 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.”

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