Ledger Pop Journal - Celebrity News & Sports

Bill Paxton, who stars as the head of a polygamist household in HBO's esteemed "Big Love," is grateful the show has been picked up for a fourth season -- and hopes it will be renewed for several seasons after that. He makes it sound as if the drama has provided him with a lifeline.

Bill made his name -- and a solid living -- as a movie actor, with featured parts in some 50 films (ranging from "True Lies" and "Twister" to "Apollo 13" and "Titanic"), but by the time he was offered "Big Love," quality parts had begun to dry up.

"It's become a strange time in the movie business," he says. "There are many independent films being made, with so much financing falling through, and when 'Big Love' came along -- I had never played a recurrent role -- I wasn't reading parts as good in feature films."

There have been reports that Paxton turned down the lead in the 2006 "The Da Vinci Code" in which Tom Hanks ended up starring, but he insists, "It's just one of the untruths that have been reported about me."

Another: That he approves of polygamy.

"I've been misquoted on that because people get so hung up on the instrument that drives the show, which is really about relationships. The fact is I'm not really approving per se, but for me to say someone's lifestyle is right or wrong, well, we live in a country that professes freedom, and I'm not a liberal, I just believe in human decency. I believe in live and let live. Whether you're into a heterosexual marriage, a same sex marriage or polygamy, it is not our right to judge."